Tears of The Bloodstone
by Godshatter
Summary: non yaoi pairings; A mix of GW and some of my own imagination (NOT AU); A.C. Era, Releena gets word of Heero's possible death and goes to Mars with Hilde and Duo to see Dr. J (incomplete) ... PLEASE READ AND REVIEW
1. Default Chapter

Standard disclaimers apply, I do not own Gundam Wing.  
  
1 Tears of the Bloodstone  
  
By: Godshatter  
  
  
  
  
  
Relena Peacecraft sat at her desk staring at the same sheet of paper that she had been staring at for the past 5 minutes. Slowly, a single jeweled tear slipped from the ocean of her eyes and dropped onto the paper with a spatter. She just couldn't believe he was dead, through the past 4 months she had been clinging to her delusions that he was somehow alive in the cold reaches of space. But these dreams were shattered with the arrival of the very document that she held in her hand, she never thought that a single sheet of paper could changer her life so completely.  
  
She had awakened to a very nervous Duo shaking her awake, "C'mon Relena, wake up!…. please wake up". Her eyes fluttered opened and as she drifted back to reality she said with a hint of annoyance in her voice at having been so forcefully woken up at glances at her alarm clock 4:00 AM??!!! "Duo Maxwell! If you do not have a half way decent excuse for waking me up at this UNGODLY hour I-", she was promptly cut off when she finally realizing that Duo was staring at her in a very disheartening way. "Hmm… now what could have shaken him up so badly that he came and woke me up at a time like this" she thought to herself as she glowered at the normally hyperactive American pilot who, for some reason, looked like he was about to fight off 100 mobile dolls unarmed. Suddenly realization dawned on her, "Oh my God, what did u find out about Heero?" she said, barley able to conceal the nervousness and fear in her voice. Duo just looked at her like he had been stabbed in the chest and tried to say something but for some reasons he just couldn't get it out. He found that for once he couldn't find the words to tell her so instead he thrust a sheet of paper into her hands. She looked at him questionably but proceeded to reed the document.  
  
OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER:  
  
MISSION STATUS: FAILED  
  
MISSION OPERATIVE STATUS: KIA  
  
LAST KNOWN LOCATION: MAP SECTION 89T3, SUB COORDINATES 5-354-45  
  
CONFIRMATION CODE: ALPHA-ZULU-01  
  
For a moment Relena stared at Duo questionably when the full realization of what she had just read hit her like a sledgehammer. She gasped for breath and uttered a meager wimper before she promptly passed out on to the floor. Duo gently picked Relena up and placed her back on her bed and pulled her covers back over her slim body. Before making his exit he placed a single kiss on her angelic face, after which he slipped out into the cool night.  
  
  
  
Relena awoke with a start. * it was only a dream it was only a dream, oh please God let it only be a dream! * was the only thought racing through her mind. She got up and was getting ready for her morning bath when she heard a rapping on her bedroom door. "Who is it?" she called. Duo being Duo simply opened the door and jumped right in to her room startling Relena out of her daydream. When Relena saw who it was she turned white as a ghost and said in a trembling voice "So it wasn't a dream was it Duo", Duo just nodded gravely and stepped out. Once outside Relena's door he hollered at her to get dressed and that he would return within the hour and that he had some important things to discuss with her.  
  
"The nerve of that guy, barging in on me like that. I could have been undressing for all he knew." Relena thought as she began dressing. As Relena was bending down to pick up her favorite hair band from the floor (which Duo had knocked over when he slammed the door open), she noticed a small piece of yellow paper laying on the floor face down. "Hmm, what's this?" Relena picked up the paper and the hair band forgotten fell to the floor with a small clatter. As Relena read the document she remembered Duo from last night: his actions and his words. The tears formed and flowed uncontrollably. "I don't care if I cry or not anymore, he isn't here to be strong anymore… to be strong for himself or for me". Relena stood up and walked over to her office and sat down, the chair's new leather creaking softly as she sat down on it. Relena looked outside and decided to open the windows, as she did so her office was filled with the musical tones of the birds and the light soothing droning sound of honeybees hard at work gathering pollen to store for the hard winter's months ahead. "This would be a perfectly beautiful day, in fact it would be a perfect day for a long stroll in the park", she thought to herself. As she thought these thoughts another one barged in on here private reflections, this one was one of her sitting under a tree with Heero, or rather, Heero sitting under the tree and Relena leaning against him, her head on his shoulders sleeping, wistfully dreaming of Heero and how he had saved her yet again from the clutches of another crazed warlord in a line of a hundred. It had been a day much like this one, the sun was shining and the birds were singing, yes, it had been a perfect day.  
  
This sudden thought brought tears flowing freely from Relena's eyes once again. The memory of this intimate moment, if it could be called such, was simply too much. Relena collapsed onto her desk and sobbed uncontrollably for several minutes.  
  
Duo was tired, upset and very determined as he ran/stumbled up the stairs and down the hall to Relena's bedroom. When he arrived there she was nowhere to be seen. "Shit, where could she have gone?" he thought as a frantically searched the 2nd story of Relena's mansion. As he was looking through the study/library that resided above Ms. Dorlin's office he heard a soft muffled noise. He instantly froze and cupped a hand around his ear so that he could here better. "What was that noise I heard?… there it is again, wait, that sounds like crying!". Duo runs over to the balcony that overlooks the Vice Foreign Minister's office and peers down at the office below him. Sure enough he sees Relena hunched over her desk, her hands over her face crying. "Oh shit, I gotta get down there and calm her down ASAP or I wont be able to explain a thing to her." Thinks Duo as he bolts down the stairs and across the hall to the adjacent room (which happens to be Relena's office) and practically flew through the door. "Ms. Relena! Get a hold of yourself, you HAVE to listen to what I'm going to tell you, it's extremely important!", Duo yelled/said to the now hysterical Relena. "I don't care anymore Duo, he's gone, long gone and he is NEVER coming back!" screamed Relena. "Shit shit shit" thought Duo, "She has really lost it this time". "How am I going to get her attention with her in this condition!" Duo yelled silently to himself. Then Duo did something he thought he would never, ever be able to do under normal circumstances (or any for that matter). He SLAPPED Relena. Duo didn't think he could or would ever hit a woman, much less Relena Peacecraft/Dorlin, Vice Foreign Minister. "I'm going to regret this, I just know it" were the words that floated through Duo's head as his hand connected with the soft skin of Relena's right cheek. The impact left both a small red imprint of Duo's hand and Relena speechless for a few seconds. Then, in a very soft and controlled voice Relena said, "Thank you Duo, I needed to be brought back to my senses, though I don't particularly approve of your methods." Duo simply nodded and apologized to Relena. "You had mentioned earlier that you had something important to tell me", said Relena. Again, Duo simply nodded and said, "Can we speak in the garden? I have to be sure that the information that I am about to give you reaches your ears and your ears only." Relena stared mutely at him for a moment then nodded "Of course Duo, I would be happy to walk with you in the garden, I need some fresh air anyways."  
  
"Man, she is taking this rather well now that I restored her senses to her, but I have a feeling that It wouldn't take much to set her off again, I'll have to be very careful how I explain this to her. Damn, I hate when I have to use my head and watch my tongue like this", thought Duo as the couple walked out onto the gravel path that lead to the rather extravagant garden behind the house.  
  
As Duo and Relena strolled along the path to her garden Relena noticed that Duo seemed a bit fidgety so she asked him "What's on your mind Duo? I don't think I've ever seen you quite for more than 5 minutes before." "Hn" was all Duo had to say to her. Relena chuckled softly and remarked, "So I see you have been hanging around Heero to long, you're even picking up some of his habits." Duo, deep in thought paid no more attention to Relena or her questions. "Ok Duo, we're here, now lets talk."  
  
As Duo and Relena entered the garden Duo was a bit taken aback by the sheer vastness and beauty of the garden. The morning dew lay gently on the leaves and flower petals of virtually every plant in the garden. Duo felt as if he had just walked into a giant prism with the sunlight reflecting off of the tear like dewdrops. The effect was quite dazzling and Duo found himself lost in the quite serenity of the seen which seemed to stretch on forever in front of him. Relena's words startled him out of his revere. "DUO, for the n'tenth time, what is it you wanted to talk to me about?" Relena asked in an exasperated tone. Duo just smiled at her and sat down in the soft grass and patted the ground beside him indicating for her to sit down beside him.  
  
Duo looked up and realizing that they had walked onto the shore of a small lake about 2/3 of a mile in diameter with small reeds on the east and south banks that swayed in the winds gentle caress. He picked up some stones from the ground and began skipping them across it. One stone skipped about 4 or 5 times and Duo being quite proud of this accomplishment looked up at Relena and gave her a lopsided grin and said "Not bed eh Lena? I hadn't even noticed that we had parked ourselves on the shore of this lake." Relena had finally given up on trying to pry Duo for the information that he was so obviously trying to convey to her but for some reason was reluctant to tell her, so she just managed a weak smile at Duo and sat down beside him. "You know, none of the colonies have places like this, sure they have some parks here and there and an occasional fishing pond but nothing like this. I suppose the only colony that could possibly hold a place as large as this and have such a myriad of plants and animals would have to be the farming colony L-8c." Duo said. As he said this the thought reminded Duo of a time when he and Heero had spent time on colony L-8a for several months on a recon/demolitions mission. Duo laughed at the memory of a time where he and Heero had gone to a bar late one night after an especially hard day harvesting one of the larger quadrants (they didn't call fields "fields" in the colonies, they called them quadrants) and found themselves in a fight that turned into an all out brawl.  
  
The incident started out when a large man who looked to be about 35 and wearing a pair of tattered blue jeans, steel toe (presumably) boots and a large black and red checkered work shirt walked up from behind Heero and ordered him out of his seat saying he had taken it from him. Heero simply ignored the man at first but as he persisted Duo sensed that this would get messy if he didn't intervene, and quick. Duo walked up from behind the burly man (who they later found out was named Pete) and asked if he could buy him a drink in hopes that the man would forget about his "stolen" seat. The man took Duo up on his offer and eventually left the bar after Duo had bought the man 2 or 3 shots of whisky and the night proceeded without further incident.  
  
The man came back, piss drunk and was sporting a black eye and a nasty looking cut on his right cheek that stretched from his chin all the way to the tip of ear and was open, dark thick blood continued to flow/ooze down his cheek and neck, eventually soaking his red and black lumberjack style checkered work shirt. The man looked none to happy about it and when he spotted Heero still in his seat the man went ballistic. The man charged at Heero screaming and cursing at him. Heero heard the man's bellowing and jumped off the barstool just as the man collided with the bar, as he did so Heero instantly spun around and executed a round house kick which landed on the back of the man's neck. The man, reeling from the blow to his head/neck stumbled a bit and hunched over the bar, after a few moments he stood up and seemed to calm down a bit, but only for a moment for he saw Heero and charged again. Heero easily dodged and tripped the man as he shot passed. "Hrmmm, this is quite amusing now that I think about it" Heero quietly thought to himself as he landed another kick to the man's mid section followed by a quick punch to the kidney and a head butt to the mans nose which caused an explosion of blood when he connected. When the man stood up again Heero was ready for the charge and as the man ran by, Heero grabbed the man's belt and ripped it off of him. Heero took the belt and rapped it around his hand until he had the buckle facing out. As the man turned to face Heero again, Heero lunged at him and smashed the buckle into the man's face causing yet another red explosion. The snapping of bones could be heard echoing throughout the room (which had become strangely silent as the fight wore on). All of this had taken place within a matter of moments. Heero bent down to put the belt buckle at the man's side and as he stood up the whole bar seemed to expand, as the people shuffled back from this seemingly harmless young farm boy who had just beaten the holy hell out of one the toughest bar fighters the small colony had ever seen. Heero began to pull out his pistol to finish the man but was stopped by Duo, who had grabbed his wrist and just shook his head. Heero got the message: no more trouble tonight.  
  
The pair paid their tab and sauntered out into the warm night. They walked over to an odd pick-up looking contraption (it was really a pickup with the bed removed and a steel panel placed where the bed should have been). Duo got in first and smirked at Heero as he eased himself onto the tattered sun bleached leather seat, "Quite a night neh? You really took that dumb bastard drunk apart. Towards the end there I saw some of the ladies in there eyeing you, you lucky scoundrel" chided Duo as he * gently * nudged Heero in the ribs. He was quickly met with the Yuy Death Glare. As Duo gunned the motor the lights from the bar softly faded into the distance as softly as the memory.  
  
Duo awoke to the sounds of birds and the hum of bees. "Wha… what?" thought Duo as he sat up. "Man, what a trip, I didn't even know I was dreaming" said Duo as he looked down to see an angelic looking creature sleeping with its head on his lap. Startled, Duo nearly jumped up but managed to restrain himself from doing so. After a moment he realized that it was only Relena. "I guess when I fell asleep she decided to take a nap too, hmmm, she certainly is beautiful, almost looks like an angel sleeping here in my lap. I can see why Heero likes her so much, though he doesn't even know it himself even if everyone else save Relena does", thought Duo as he peered down at the sleeping princess. "Oh well, I guess ill wait till she wakes up to talk to her, its not like I could do anything right now anyway" Duo said softly to himself. * YAWN * "Hehehe, I guess ill take a quick nap myself. Good night Lena, sweet dreams", whispered Duo as he nodded off and let oblivion claim him.  
  
* FLASH * * BOOM-CLAP * Duo awoke to the booming of thunder rolling over the hills, sounding much like some distant battle ground. Luckily, Relena had heard the thunder also and had gotten up a few moments before Duo had been awakened. "Awwww great, just what I need. Now its gonna take forever to get my hair dried", whined Duo as he clutched his braid and attempted to ring it out. "Well, we have a long walk ahead of us, we might as well get going. I wish I had thought to bring a watch, or an umbrella", Duo ruefully remarked. The duo got up and decided that since they were going to get soaked to the bone anyways they might as well take it easy on the ¾ mile hike back to Relena's mansion. On the way back Duo was deep in thought. "Dammit! I wasted the whole friggen day out here with Relena and I didn't say a single word about what Dr. J told me. I wish he could have told me this BEFORE he told me to give that report to Lena, I know it tore her up inside. When we get back I'm going to tell her, precautions be damned. I don't give a shit if her room is bugged or if Dr. J told me not to tell her, she might be a strong person, she sure as hell proved that long ago but she cant go on and me not give her this information. I just wouldn't feel right." "Duo?" Asked Relena, not quite used to this more quiet and reserved Duo. Duo didn't even acknowledge her question, he just kept walking, obviously deep in thought. "I can't believe this guy! He is worse than Heero, if I don't get some answers out of him I'm gonna cut off that braid of his and beat it out of him", Relena angrily thought to herself as they trudged home along the now muddied path.  
  
As Relena unlocked the back door with a click of a deadbolt she softly opened the heavy wooden door with a creek of the hinges. "I should probably get those oiled", thought Relena to herself as the pair entered the mansion.  
  
The first thing they noticed as the came in out from the rain was that the power had apparently gone out. As Duo realized this he instinctively reached for his 9mm, although he doubted the threat of an attacker one could never be too careful.  
  
"Wait right here, I'm gonna go down to the basement and check the fuse box. Ill be back in a few minutes", whispered Duo as he left to go get a flashlight. Relena looked down to see that he had given her is 9mm.  
  
"Ahh, here it is, damn, that must have been a helluva shock to the system" said Duo as he whistled while eyeing the shredded metal cable before him. "Wait a minute, there's no burn or flash marks on the plaster on the wall behind the cable or its power coupling", said Duo to himself. "There's no way that that cable didn't cause at least some damage to the wall when it overloaded, in fact, it almost looks as if its… been… cut", Duo mentally kicked himself in the ass for not thinking something was awry, he knew there was no way that a mere thunderstorm could overload the systems and the backups that he and Heero had personally installed in here.  
  
* BANG BANG BANG * " Fuck!" yelled Duo as he heard the report of a pistol followed swiftly by the * ratattatta * of a rapid-fire machine gun. "Dammit I knew I shouldn't have left her, I just KNEW it!" Duo practically screamed at himself as he bolted up the flight of stairs to the kitchen where he had left Relena.  
  
Relena felt the cold metal and the light weight of the gun in her right hand. Strange, it almost felt natural the way the gun was balanced when she held it up to eye level as she brought the sights down on her reflection in one of the many mirrors that had been scattered throughout her manor. "Hmmm, now that I think about the last time I had leveled a gun on someone was in Russia, when I shot the rose off of Lady Une's dress. Strange, I don't think I could bare to shoot her now that we have become such close friends", Relena thought quietly to herself. As she turned to look at out the window to the now pouring rain she thought of how comforting it felt to be inside, to here the light pitter patter of the rain as it bombarded the elaborately crafted windows. While she was deep in thought she heard a noise behind her, she spun around and in one fluid motion she brought the gun to bear on a short, very well built young man of about 25.  
  
The young man gave an evil smile and lunged at Rrelena, who dodged his attack and dropped to the ground, firing 3 quick bursts with Duo's 9mm. The man recovered from the tumble that he had taken due to Relena dodging his attack. He quickly stood up and brought what appeared to be a gauss rifle to bear on her. She dove and rolled behind the couch as the man let loose with a barrage of diluted uranium (DU) slugs, which exploded when they impacted with the hard metal of her refrigerator; showering the floor with sparks. Just as he was about to finish Relena off at point blank range the man was hit hard in the back of the head, just at the base of the neck. The man slumped over, dead.  
  
As Duo stared at the prone figure laying at his feet he noticed a black armband with a large anarchy symbol on it. "Christ, not ANOTHER terrorist organization. I thought the White Fang and the Sigon Clan were it and everyone finally got the message of peace", said Duo as he smacked himself upside the head. Relena just looked at the dead soldier with a distant stare, she said nothing but headed for her room upstairs. "YAWN", "I guess she has the right idea, ill stay with her the night but first thing in the morning we are having a chat", thought Duo as he collapsed on Relena's sofa and checked his watch 10:45. "Man, we were out there MUCH latter than I thought. Oh well." Duo decided it was time to sack out and began to slowly climb the wooden stairs, each step coaxing moans and creeks from the old steps. "I'm going to have to be more careful now, more careful now that Heero won't be around to protect Relena for a while. I never thought I would have to keep this promise that I made to Heero to protect her, I always figured he would be here for her. After all, they guys indestructible… Isn't he?" mused Duo as he opened the door to the bedroom suite adjacent to Relena's own room. Before turning in for the night Duo padded over to Relena's room in just his socks and black boxers and slowly opened her door with a soft creek. "I hope she gets plenty of sleep, tomorrow is going to be a long day for both of us" whispered Duo to himself", and then louder, "Good night Lena, and sweet dreams." Releena gave a soft sigh and then "Heero" in reply to Duo's remarks. "Poor girl, I know this is tearing her apart inside. I just hope what I say to her doesn't give her too much false hope. I hope that all can and will be made right in time." Duo wondered if he was doing the right thing as he closed his own door. Soon deep snoring could be heard from the other side of the door.  
  
Perched on a limb of a large oak tree just outside the front wall of Releena's estate sat a dark figure with an eye that glowed as if it were a flame and a gaze as empty as the vacuum of space. Slowly a small smile formed on his lips, though the disfigurement of his face made it seem more like an evil grimace than a smile. The man stood up and with the grace and agility of a cat he leaped from the branch and executed a double flip before he landed with but a small * pat * on the soft grass 30ft below. "You may live a bit longer princess, but only a bit. We are coming and when we come the Armageddon machines that we will unleash upon the Earth will make the skies rain fire. The seas will become as blood and all creation will tremble before those whom she banished from her sight and loving embrace to the farthest reaches of Hell. Sleep well princess, and sleep easy, I have not come to take you from this world tonight." These words were but a whisper, lost to the night air even before they reached the man's ears. All that could be heard was the rustle of leaves and all that could be seen were the clouds pushed by the wind across the endless starry night. 


	2. Tears of the Bloodstone Part II

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing so don't sue me.  
  
  
  
Great thanks goes to my fellow author and occasional editor Zyraen.  
  
1.1 Tears of the Bloodstone Part II  
  
by: Godshatter  
  
  
  
Blood, blood everywhere. I look down below me to see my kingdom bathed in blood and war. I cannot speak; I cannot move; I cannot even blink. I look up and see the moon and gasp in my mind. There is no moon, there is not even the soft light cast by the stars in the jeweled heavens. The sky is black except for a heart, a cancerous black heart that pumps not the blood of life but a thick oil that pours onto the land and strangles from its war torn hills the last inkling of life. In the midst of this a line floats into my mind, "In the end there is cruelty and death alone over the land, not in a single ray of light or grain of sand will you find solace. For all is dark and the gaze of God's indifferent, heavy lidded eyes falls on all with equal disdain." "Yes, that has certainly happened here" I think as I look out on to untold miles of Hell's surface, or at least what I would think Hell would look like.  
  
Dark clouds form over the countryside and the rain begins to fall. The rain soaks into the ground and pools with the blood in the streets and in the walkways, washing its filth from the ground. Its sweet smell cleanses the air of the stink of death and of fear. It seems that for now life may have a chance to reclaim its lost ground. I cautiously begin to descend the hill that I had been standing on. "What has happened here." "What is this war in the hearts of men." I say as I look down at my kingdom in ruins. "Why does nature vie with itself; the land contend with the sea? Is there some avenging power in nature? Not one power but two?" I muse to myself aloud. "One of these days I'm going to find out what drives men to fight each other and themselves, even if it takes the entirety of my life".  
  
Down the road Releena comes to a curious white and blue structure laying on the ground. Upon closer examination she realizes to her horror that it is the prone figure of Wing Zero Custom. Laying face down, arms outstretched towards the sparkling ocean, it looks like a fallen angel, "Heero", Releena murmurs to herself, barley above a whisper. "You're a fallen angel Heero, my fallen angel." The tears came again but were fought off, "This is no time for tears, I have to be strong; for myself and for my people." But as Releena picked herself off from the cobblestone road she noticed a figure on a wall, chained and horribly marred and disfigured.  
  
Fighting against her better judgment Releena ran over to the figure, that's all she could think of it as. She couldn't even think of it as human, much less a man or a woman. The head was shaved accept for a small dark long bang, the ears had been torn off save for a little scrap of skin hanging from the left ear lobe. On the right cheek there was a long slash that ran from where the right ear would have been across the right eye (through the socket where the eye had "popped" and ran) and down across the nose where it stopped just above the upper lip. There was another slash that ran from just above the right eye down to the neck where there was a gaping hole in the throat, blood still warm poured out and pooled on the ground.  
  
The face was a mass of blood and brain matter, completely unrecognizable except for a glint of color that caught Releena's eye just as she was about to continue her examination of the body. It was there for only a moment, just the smallest hint of steely blue in the left eye, like glacial ice it was there and then… nothing; it had slipped into the frozen ocean of death. Releena gasped in recognition as she realized that this broken shell of a man, this hideous, battered creature was her Heero. Releena collapsed onto the ground sobbing uncontrollably. She looked up through her crystalline tears at the body in front of her, she saw the whip marks on the chest, the knife wounds that ran from his waist all the way up to his fore arms and finally her gaze fell to his abdomen, where a long deep gash running from left to right had spilled his entrails all over himself. Blood ran red and freely from his wounds and saturated the ground around him. The stench of decay violated her delicate nostrils and filled her whole being. She gagged, once, twice and vomited all over herself adding to the filth around her. Releena collapsed to kneel before he who was once her knight in shining armor, tears streaking down her face...  
  
The clink of chains roused Releena out of her stupor. She looked up and saw that Heero was alive. He jerked his left arm a bit. The chain grated against the concrete wall that he was bound to. His head moved a bit as if he were looking around. Heero gave the most feral, blood-curdling scream. Releena's vision shivered before his scream, then cracked down the center to shatter like glass, as her scream joined his before her the world faded into nothingness...  
  
Releena awoke screaming and soaked in sweat in her bed. Moments latter a loud *BANG* and then, "OUCH! Dammit." Still sobbing Releena looked up to see Duo open her door and quietly slide inside her bedchambers while holding his hand to his head.  
  
"You alright Lena? I heard you screaming from across the hall and thought maybe someone had come back for you", whispered Duo as he began looking around the room, checking the window locks and sweeping the closet for intruders. When Releena didn't say anything he looked back at her huddled form quivering under the blankets, tears glistening in the moonlight.  
  
"Duo you baka" he said as he mentally kicked himself in the ass for the second time that evening. Duo softly walked over to Releena's bed and sat down, circling his arm around her waist. Releena leaned on his shoulder and continued to sob quietly to herself. Soon though, Releena's sobs became less intense and less frequent as her body began to shake less and less Duo could tell that she was calming down. "You going to be alright?" asked Duo quietly. "Yes Duo, I think I'll be ok. It was only a bad dream, nothing more", Releena said quietly, unsure if what she said was what she felt.  
  
"Alright, I'm going to go back to bed, you need to get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a long day. Sweet dreams Lena", he whispered. Duo smiled at her and gave her a small hug and kiss on her forehead before he got up and exited quietly, like a wraith in the night.  
  
Releena lay in her bed lost in thought. "I wish Heero would show outward emotion like that sometimes. Duo sure can be sweet though, Hilde is a very lucky girl", said Releena wistfully. As she stared out her window her thoughts began to wonder. "I pray that you are alright Heero. May the gods be with you." With those last words in her mind she drifted back into darkness, lulled by the gentle chirping of the crickets and the songs of the night.  
  
The next morning Releena awoke to the sun pouring in through her window, momentarily blinded by the dazzling light she stirred and rubbed the last remnants of sleep from her lashes. Releena got up, put on a deep blue bathrobe and headed for her morning shower.  
  
As the warm water streamed down her body she reflected on the previous nights events, mainly on her dream. It had seemed so real. She just couldn't shake the feeling that something horrible was coming and it lay just over the horizon. Call it a hunch, a "feeling", or just plain woman's intuition. It scared the hell out of her.  
  
Releena stepped out of her shower and walked over to her oaken dresser and pulled out her wardrobe for the day: dark blue stonewashed jeans, light yellow spaghetti strap tank top and her white tennis shoes, "No work today, thank God", she muttered to herself as she tossed on her shoes and ran out the door.  
  
As she glided down the stairwell that led from her upper hall to her kitchen she noticed a strange noise, like a deep grumbling. When she stepped through the double swinging door to her kitchen the sight before her was rather amusing.  
  
Duo lay slumped over the table snoring. Wearing nothing but black boxers with his head resting in his arms, a bottle of whiskey next to him. Releena couldn't help but giggle to herself, though the thought of Duo drinking like this at such a young age disturbed her a bit. "I hope he doesn't have a hangover. It would sure be hard to get any information from him if he is passed out on my table though. Guess I should wake him up". The grin on Releena's face would have frozen the blood in Duo's veins.  
  
Duo had been enjoying a particularly steamy dream involving him, Hilde and a * very * large hot tub. The next thing he knew was that he was on the ground being tickled to death. "What" * gasp * "In" * pant * "The hell?" panted Duo in between ragged gasps of air. "ARE YOU DOING TO ME" Duo finally managed to yell. Looking at Releena an evil grin spread across his face  
  
"Uh, oh. Duo Maxwell don't you even think abo- GAAH!" Releena was cut off when Duo promptly glomped her and began to tickle her.  
  
As the two rolled around the floor in fits of laughter Pagan had come in from the garage after he had gone on an errand.  
  
"Mr. Maxwell, Miss Releena just what exactly are you two doing hmm?"  
  
Releena jumped at Pagan's seemingly unannounced entrance and turned 14 different shades of read, Duo laughing all the while  
  
"Ahahahahaha, Releena I don't think I've ever seen anyone turn that many shades of red before", remarked Duo in between fits of laughter as he rolled around on the floor clutching his sides.  
  
"Mr. Maxwell, I have reserved you and Ms. Releena a flight on the next shuttle to Mars. However, since it was on such short notice I didn't have much choice about flights and yours leaves in about 5 hours. I suggest that you go back to Preventers HQ and pack. I'll help Ms. Releena here," said Pagan, a hint of steel in his voice.  
  
"Er um, heh heh, Sure Pagan, I'll be ready in a few hours. Pick me up at the base around noon, that way I can eat before we go." Duo blanches and then "I can't stand airline food"  
  
Pagan glances at the clock. "Alright Duo, I'll pick you up at the west gate."  
  
"Sure thing Pagan." As Duo bounds out of the kitchen and heads upstairs to change Pagan remembers the other thing he meant to tell Duo.  
  
"Oh, Mr. Maxwell? I forgot to tell you that Dr. J told me to tell you that Hilde needed to come also, so I took the liberty to book her for the same flight. Make sure you both are ready at 12:00 sharp. Remember, it's the WEST gate."  
  
"Sure, sure. I'll remember" Duo, noticing that Pagan is glaring daggers at him quickly adds, "Really, I'll remember"  
  
"Mr. Maxwell, do get on with it"  
  
"All right all right, catcha on the flip side Lena." With that he excused himself from the kitchen and bolted upstairs.  
  
Duo opened the door to his room and pulled his Preventers uniform out of a duffel bag and threw it on. Heh heh, Colonel Maxwell, that has a nice ring to it. I sure am glad they signed us Gundam Pilots on as officers. Being a grunt would be so uncool. Anyways, I should get going. Gotta be ready at the East gate? No, it was the West gate… I think. Dammit! Wait, it was the west gate, whew. Thought I forgot it already. Duo stands up from tying his boots and bolts out the door and downstairs to the driveway where his black Harley was waiting.  
  
* * *  
  
"Honestly Miss Releena I don't see what Ms. Schbieker sees in that boy. He is very strange."  
  
"I know Pagan, he has to be the way he is, or the pain of war would drive him mad. Inside that cheerful exterior is a bleeding wound that has just begun to heal. Hopefully Hilde can help heal him." Replied Releen. I know someone I wish I could help heal, but I don't even know where he is. Duo and Hilde don't know how lucky they really are to have each other, to not be alone all the time…  
  
"Are you all right Ms. Releena?" asked Pagan, concern in his eyes.  
  
Releena, a distant look in her eyes, snaps her attention to Pagan, "Yes Pagan, I just dazed out for a moment, it's still early in the morning and I'm not quite awake yet", replied Releena, a tinge of pain in her voice.  
  
"Alright, now, lets get you packed and ready to go."  
  
* * *  
  
Duo sat at a red light, thinking. Wonder what doc J wants to see Hilde for anyways. I didn't even know she had ever met him, much less have any reason to see him. The light turned green while Duo was still in lala land. The car behind him honked, startling Duo out of his demur. He sped off, flipping the driver behind him an obscene gesture as the man roared past him. Oh man, I've got a bad feeling about this one…  
  
* * *  
  
Hilde Schbieker had joined the Preventers organization after the Sigon Clan's insurrection 2 years ago. Now she found herself in command of an elite group of mobile suit pilots specializing in covert ops and demolition. She had just gotten back from a small demo job on colony 6-M. Even though the job was relatively small, (only a furniture factory) because it once housed ammunition and contraband material it was considered a military ops.  
  
"What a way to spend the week, cooped up in a small command bunker with no action. 6 days of absolute boredom ended with 30 seconds of mild excitement" complained Hilde to her friend Kat over her breakfast of powdered eggs and dry toast.  
  
"No shit. Oh well, at least I got to push the button" Replied Kat, idly poking at her hashbrowns. "And another thing, with all the power the Preventers has you'd think that we could get some better food. This stuff tastes like something I would scrape off the bottom of my boots."  
  
"Ugh, that's disgusting Kat, couldn't you just say that the food is awful? I don't think I can finish this" remarked Hilde as she slid her plate aside. "I wonder what Duo is up to, I haven't seen him in about a week."  
  
As if on cue Duo burst through mess hall door, tripped over some spilt orange juice and landed face first right beside Hilde's chair.  
  
"Duo, you're a lost cause" said Hilde smiling.  
  
"Yeah, yeah, I try love."  
  
"I know you do. Now where have you been the past week?" asked Hilde expectantly.  
  
"Oh you know, around. The usual. You need to go get packed though, we're supposed to meat doc J on Mars and our flight leaves at 3:00. I want to eat lunch before we go, you know how I feel about airline food" as Duo said this he visibly flinched at the last remark.  
  
"Alright, I'll run up and pack" laughed Hilde. "By the way, how long are we going to be there?"  
  
"Umm…" Duo began thinking. After a few moments it was clear that the effort was beginning to have adverse effects on him.  
  
"Forget about it, I'll pack for a few days and if we end up staying longer I'll just have to find a laundry mat"  
  
"No, wait. Doc said we would probably be there about 4 days" replied Duo, grinning sheepishly.  
  
Both girls look at each other and grinned, "Hopeless" they say in tandem.  
  
* * *  
  
"Admiral, the Ultrawave Drive is complete. Fleet upgrades should be complete sometime late in the week and the final upgrades to our strike craft can be made en route. Your flagship, Hunter-Gratzna, should be fully refitted and operational by 18:00 hours tomorrow, the old kinetic particle weapons have all been replaced by the new rail guns and the sub-light engines have all been upgraded to ramscoop fusion drives. Though I don't know how the computer will handle the upgrades, it should hold up fairly well" explained the low level tech.  
  
"Very well sergeant, you are dismissed"  
  
"Sir, if I may ask, what do you plan to do now?" queried the technician.  
  
Admiral Verner fixed the soldier with a withering glare, then replied: "Ride the light." 


	3. Tears of the Bloodstone Part III

"I think about you all the time, but I don't need to sing. It's lonely where you are so come back down, and I won't tell your name."  
  
-'Name' by Googoo Dolls  
  
  
  
1 Tears of the Bloodstone Part III  
  
By: Godshatter  
  
Disclaimer: (do I really have to do this every time?) I don't own Gundam Wing….  
  
  
  
Pain: pain is nothing more than the transmission of electrons via nervous tissue in order to power receptor cells that transmit electrical pulses into our brain arranged in a pattern that allows us to discern the intensity of our bodies interaction with a foreign stimuli. Complicated right?  
  
Pain wasn't the only thing filling the darkened cockpit, (dimmed and pitch colored except for a small display panel with a large wire frame globe: coordinate numbers glaring a dull amber color). Pain was something he had learned to shut out. Globules of blood sluggishly drifted about the small compartment; breath coming heavy and sporadic with hands laying limp on the two control sticks, a young man's body rested, battered and bleeding, in the pilot seat.  
  
The autopilot was top of the line: it had had the same grid coordinates in its system for months in case something was to go wrong. During the mission, its internal AI had been constantly hacking the target's satellite network, scanning for signs of its pilot, downloading any relevant information. As the set return date approached the AI had dumped its physical memory (that which contained all of the mission downloads pertaining to its pilot and the mission itself,) into flight recorder disks and storing the entire cache in a Nutcracker (Nuclear- Chemical-Radiation-Resistant container.) The day of the departure arrived and the autopilot switched to a 24 hour countdown timer, upon reaching 0, the autopilot would make a bee-line for whatever its preset destination was.  
  
Now in full control, the autopilot held true to its course and raced towards a low lunar orbit, where it would aerobrake in the weak atmosphere of the moon, and use its gravity to literally hurl it towards the earth. Its final destination was a manmade lake in a small Arabian desert.  
  
* * *  
  
The shuttle from earth was spacious, Duo walked down the blue carpeted isle at the front of the craft. He had 'abused' his rank, (seeing as how this was a military supervised flight) and reserved 3 first class seats for himself and his 2 companions. There was a quiet jazz tune drifting about the first class cabin while he, Releena, and Hilde all stuffed their carry on luggage into the racks above their heads.  
  
"Thanks for getting us the seats Duo," said Releena, "I wouldn't have had the nerve to use my position like that," said Releena, reaching up on her tip-toes to stow her carry on bag in the top overhead luggage rack.  
  
"Don't sweat it," replied Duo, giving her a hand getting her bag up and into the compartment. "You should try and have some fun with it though, after all its not only work that comes with your rank, so do certain… 'privileges'." He winked at her and grinned slyly. Hilde just rolled her eyes.  
  
The passengers had started to board by then, they were of all types and descriptions, from the casual businessman to the small group of school children taking a class trip. Only one other person was sitting in first class with them: an old man with long graying hair and a stringy beard. He wore tan colored shorts that were frayed at the end, like they had been cut off of a longer pair of pants. He had on a plain black shirt and dark green hunting vest, on his feet were nothing more than a tattered pair of sandals. On the seat next to him was an old beat up military backpack that looked like it belonged in a museum, it's straps were torn or frayed and there were all kinds of stitch marks where it had been sewn back together. He was of a large build, and was still quite muscular even though he looked to be 50 or so. Duo watched him pull a leather bound book from his pack and scribble something down in it.  
  
The captain's voice came on over the intercom, "Ladies and gentleman welcome to Federation Shuttle Flight 216, nonstop to Tranquility Hub, current weather is 72 degrees Fahrenheit, wind is 2 knots and we will be launching shortly. Our estimated travel time from here to the lunar halo is 13 hours. We request that you observe our restricted smoking policy and fasten your safety belts around yourself at this time."  
  
After the captain switched off the intercom, the flight attendants made their way down the isle helping passengers secure their carryon and themselves. Hilde and Releena had both already strapped themselves in. Hilde glanced over at Duo, who was still fiddling with his harnesses and asked, "Ex-Gundam pilot Preventers Colonel and you can't even put on a shuttle's seat belt?" Releena laughed at this and reached over to help Duo.  
  
"Its not that babe, its just… this is it? One damn strap is it? I'm looking around for like a shoulder harness or something, but nothing's there."  
  
Hilde chuckled as Releena buckled Duo's seat belt and patted him on the knee, "You don't fly civilian shuttles often do you."  
  
"Sure, all the time, I just always pilot them, the pilots have a waist belt, and a duel shoulder strap anchoring them into the seat." He emphasized the word 'anchor' by slamming himself back into his seat and making a show of trying to move.  
  
"Duo, when did you ever pilot anything civilian?" asked Hilde, giggling in spite of herself.  
  
"Uh, well," Duo fidgeted in his seat, "Well, there was that one time, when I was on site for the Tranquility refitting operation. You remember Hilde, you were doing that asteroid demo job at the hub, when the military was trying to move raw materials into orbit around the moon."  
  
"I've never heard this story Duo," said Releena. She was about to say more when the fasten seat belt sign flickered and a tone sounded. The stewardesses dropped their tasks and made their way to the rear of the shuttle where they strapped themselves in. The tone sounded 2 more times followed by a loud whine in the background. Under their feet they heard humming as fuel was sucked up from the drooping wings through long siphon pipes. A 'switch' and a 'hiss' signified the pressurization of the cabin while the whine emanating from the rear of the shuttle steadily increased into a deafening roar.  
  
The captain's voice once again came on over the intercom, just a barely audible squeak over the bellowing of the engines. "We have completed our final check and are cleared for takeoff, I will initiate the final countdown; all attendants to their stations please." On the backs of every chair, (and hovering in front of the first class passengers), a large holographic image of a countdown timer appeared. Starting at T- Minus: 15 seconds it counted down till 5, at which point a tone sounded and continued until the timer hit 0.  
  
At first it felt like there was a single hand being pushed gently against her chest, Releena closed her eyes and waited for the grim weight of multiple-G acceleration. It had been a while since she had taken a trip off planet. Looking over at her friends, she saw Hilde looking out the window. The ground was rushing by under the shuttle. They passed the control tower along with the long gantry hanger beneath it, the line of aircraft and shuttles streaked by in a blurring splash of color, gradually becoming more distorted as their speed increased.  
  
Duo, who was sitting at the far left on the isle seat, had called up a holoscreen: it displayed a view from an external camera mounted over the cockpit. "You two might want to brace yourselves a little bit, we're coming up to the boost ramp." Releena nodded and closed her eyes, resting her arms solidly on their armrests. Duo glanced over to Hilde and saw that she was still looking past Releena and out the window. He grinned and draped his arm around her. Another tone sounded and the shuttle hit the ramp.  
  
The pilot opened up the throttle all the way, pouring fuel into the engines. They lit up the sky with a blinding light and drowned out the world with a roar that seemed to bellow from the very sky they were hurtling through.  
  
The shuttle bucked violently, Releena jerked her eyes open and head up to look around. She thought she heard Duo say something but couldn't tell for sure over the engines. She looked over at him and he seemed to mouth something. Unable to read his lips she just shook her head. Duo nodded and leaned over in front of Hilde, "Sound barrier," he said. Not understanding, Releena just gave him a confused look. "Sound barrier," he said again, "We are breaking the sound barrier." The shuttle rocked again and threw Releena back in her seat. Duo just lay sprawled in Hilde's lap. She blushed and picked her friend up by his braid. Duo yelped and bolted upright in his seat. Unable to laugh because of the intense acceleration and G-force, Releena just smiled weakly at her friends. Apparently their time of service in the military had built up a tolerance for this sort of thing, and of course, Duo was a gundam pilot.  
  
The windows were sealed by a metal plate that slid down to cover the glass from the outside while they passed through the upper atmosphere, though the heat buildup wasn't as extreme as it was during a reentry, it was still significant enough to cause concern during the early space- transit days.  
  
Unable to look out the window, Hilde rested her head against Duo's shoulder and shut her eyes. Duo opened his eyes and blinked. Looking down at Hilde he kissed the top of her head and rested his own back against the seat.  
  
To Releena, the weight of acceleration felt like a massive boot planted over her chest, slowly pressing her into the back of her seat. While not quite painful, the sensation was still very, very uncomfortable. The weight was growing and the boot felt as though it were going to punch through to her spine, then nothing. Her hair floated up and drifted about her face. She looked over at Duo and saw that his braid was twisting around in the air like some sort of snake.  
  
Duo reached out and grabbed his braid; coiling it up behind his head he yawned and stretched his arms, popping his joints. "Ugh," said Hilde, "Do you always have to do that when we fly?"  
  
"But babe, takeoff always makes me feel like I'm being smashed into a sardine can." Hilde shook her head and turned to Releena, who was busy trying to keep her hair from floating into her eyes. "Um, Hilde? Do you have a rubber band or something?" Hilde felt around in her pockets, but after a moment shook her head, "Nope, sorry Releena."  
  
"I do," said Duo. Reaching into his pocket he managed to produce a black hair scrunchy and handed it to Releena.  
  
"Thanks Duo, you're the only guy I know who would ever carry around one of these things." Duo noticed Releena looking at him, his braid in particular, "Well uh, yeah, sometimes I leave it unbraided… you know, to let it breath." He flushed somewhat and managed to flag down a flight attendant.  
  
"Yes?" asked the young woman.  
  
"Do you have any snacks or anything on here? I'm starving."  
  
"If you can wait a little bit we should be bringing dinner out, we should be serving it in about 15 minutes." Duo seemed to consider it, but after a few moments his empty stomach made its presence known.  
  
"Er," said Duo, "Is it any good? Cause, just between you and me, airline food isn't all that great, know what I mean?" The young woman smiled at him and pointed to the gold eagle on his jacket, "Well colonel, I bet you don't fly civilian flights very often do you."  
  
"A… heheh, no I don't miss, ya got me there." Duo's braid had by now gotten loose from where he had coiled it up behind his head, and he was frantically trying to catch the end of it, but every time he moved his arm, his head would move and jerk the end of his braid out of reach again. Both Releena and Hilde were beside themselves trying to keep from laughing. Releena's entire face was a bright flush colored red, she had both hands over her mouth and teardrops were starting to brim. Hilde though, unable to contain herself had to quickly look away and was shaking with laughter.  
  
Finally the young stewardess reached out and caught Duo's fidgety braid and handed it to him. "Oi, thanks, it can be a pain in the neck sometimes." Hilde chanced a quick look back at her boyfriend and burst out laughing again, it didn't seem possible for him to turn yet another shade of red, but him being Duo, he didn't disappoint.  
  
After the group had managed to calm down (and Releena remembered to breath), the stewardess resumed her conversation. "Well, I think you'll find civilian flight food much more palatable than your standard MRE."  
  
Duo seemed to think on the matter, and finally agreed, "Alright," he said, "But what exactly are you serving for dinner?"  
  
The stewardess punched in a series of numbers on her clipboard and glanced over her display. "Choice of either turkey or beef on either rye bread or whole wheat, tomato basil soup or cream of potato soup, soft drink, apple or banana and a candy bar."  
  
"That sounds pretty good," replied Duo. "Ok, I'll wait. But could I have a candy bar now?" Duo tried to look as puppy-faced as he could.  
  
The girl laughed and nodded, with a swish of her blouse and skirt she floated off towards the back of the shuttle, leaving a light trail of perfume scented air.  
  
"Duo, your so shameless."  
  
"What was that babe?" Duo, still grinning, turned around in his seat to face back to Hilde and Releena.  
  
"Oh nothing," she jabbed him playfully in the ribs and kissed him on the cheek.  
  
The flight attendant made her way back from the back of the craft and handed Duo his candy bar, "One of the other attendants should be here in a few minutes to take your dinner requests," she said as she floated back towards the rear.  
  
"You know," said Duo, munching on his candy bar, "I would think dinner in the first class cabin of a federation civilian shuttle flight to Tranquility would be a little better than a sandwich."  
  
"Duo," said Hilde, stealing a bite from Duo's candy bar, "You know you can't eat extravagant meals in a null-G place like this, it would royally muck up the oxygen scrubbers with all that gunk floating around."  
  
Duo pouted and Releena started chuckling, "Duo, you're really cute when you do that." Duo blushed and Hilde patted him on the head, "Yeah, he's my goofball alright." Both girls got a laugh out of that.  
  
"Man, you two are mean, I'll just have to sit here and do nothing for the whole trip." Duo folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes, turning his head to face out into the isle, away from the girls.  
  
Hilde and Releena both exchanged knowing glances, "Duo, you won't last five minutes like that," said Releena. "Yeah," said Hilde, "Why don't you come back and play with us."  
  
Duo didn't make a sound. A few minutes passed and he turned to look back at the girls, who were staring right back at him, unblinking. He closed his eyes and turned his head back away from them.  
  
Air passed through the conduits overhead while the oxygen scrubbers hummed away. The engines continued to belch fire, but in the soundless environment of space the bellowing roar that had at first spewed out of the rocket nozzles drifted up through the cabins as little more than a dull rumble. Inside the cabin itself, air currents drifted lazily throughout the isles and passengers, occasionally a slight breeze would drift over someone's newspaper and it would rattle slightly.  
  
Duo looked back at the girls, who continued to stare back at him unblinking. "You two are really starting to creep me out, you know?"  
  
Both girls tried their hardest not to laugh, or even crack a smile. They seemed to do fine until Duo arched one of his eyebrows and gave them a funny leer. It was just too much, both girls burst out laughing and Hilde pounced on Duo. As the two were about to flout out into the isle, Releena reached out and grabbed hold of Duo's braid, tugging them back into their seats.  
  
"Oow ow ow ow… Leena, that hurt," grumbled Duo, rubbing the top of his head.  
  
"Sorry Duo, but the flight attendant was trying to get through the isle, you were about to fly into her. I just grabbed hold of the only thing on hand."  
  
"Oi… but still," Duo continued to rub his head. Next to him Hilde was giggling, "Aw, stop your bitching Duo, be a man."  
  
"But babe-" Duo was cut off when Hilde leaned over and planted a nice wet kiss right on his mouth. "Eheh… heh… in that case." Duo grinned and glomped Hilde, the two thrashed around in a midair for several moments while Duo tried to tickle Hilde  
  
"Ack! Duo, you know how ticklish I am."  
  
Duo grinned evilly and nodded his head vigorously.  
  
"Uh…. If ya'll are busy I can come back and take your orders latter."  
  
Releena tapped Duo on the shoulder and pointed to the stewardess who had brought Duo's candy bar. "I think it's dinner time," she said.  
  
"Ah, so it is, so it is," said Duo, letting go of Hilde. Hilde floated back down into her seat and turned several shades of red. The flight attendant, trying very hard not to laugh, asked the group what they wanted and left.  
  
"Dou, you were saying earlier, about how you had piloted a civilian shuttle during some sort of construction on the moon? I don't think I've ever heard that story," said Releena.  
  
Do yawned and stretched like a cat, "Hmmph," was all he said. As he started to speak again, the flight attendant appeared with their sandwiches and fruit. "Ya, it was when we were rebuilding the Halo for Tranquility, the lunar station." Duo took a huge bite out of his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. "This stuff is pretty good." Both Releena and Hilde took small bites from their own meals and nodded their heads in agreement.  
  
"I wasn't a full colonel then, just a Lt. Colonel, I was there under the command of Fleet Marshal Hymie Wyise. Pretty level headed guy. Anyways," Duo continued, "That was when a fragment of the Sigon Clan was still roaming in space." Duo took a sip from his drink bulb and finished off his sandwich.  
  
"I didn't know the Sigon had made it into space," said Releena, a concerned expression on her face."  
  
"Well, we were pretty surprised at the news too, we had always thought that they were only an earthbound group. The real surprise is that they had started in space and had overtly taken over a colony long before the Eve Wars. Sigon Clan is older than the old federation."  
  
"Duo," said Hilde "Is this the time your shuttle was attacked in that escort convoy? The one at the far side of the moon where all the attacks on the Halo were."  
  
Duo nodded, "You got it babe." Hilde grimaced and replied, "That was an ugly incident; we all thought you'd died."  
  
"I was in a 3 shuttle convoy, the first 2 were carrying engineers and parts for the Halo that had been attacked a few days prior. There were 2 fighter groups from the 104th fighter wing based out of Miramar on the moon, and a heavy bomber group from the152nd bomber wing from Tranquility Hub." Duo clenched his fists and crushed his empty drink bulb in his hand, it groaned and gave way with a loud crinkling noise.  
  
"Skunkworks had thought up some new toy for me to use. It was based on the zero system data compiled from Heero's flight recorders. It was supposed to let me issue direct orders to the individual pilots in real time via the their flight computers. It let me show to them in a millisecond the overall objective I was trying to get them to accomplish. Basically it put a 3D image of what I was trying to come up with for a battle plan onto a readout that displayed directly on their retinas."  
  
Hilde took hold of Duo's arm, sensing his overwhelming emotions washing over her, "Duo, you never told me about the new system."  
  
"I couldn't babe, it was a classified eyes only type thing."  
  
"Did it work?" asked Releena.  
  
"Ya, it worked, it worked wonderfully well. But then those bastards played their trump card." Duo put his hands in his head and sighed animatedly, "I don't know what the fuck it was. At first it looked like we were gonna kick the shit out of em. They only had what looked to be a small contingent of fighters and maybe 2 or 3 mobile suits providing fire support, the mobile suits looked like first generation Leo's. The heavy bombers took out the mobile suits easily, but once the fighters were duking it out they pulled some crazy stuff. I'm talking stuff that defied physics, they just took the damn rulebook and tossed it out the airlock." Hilde was clutching to Duo's side while Releena just stared out the viewport, seemingly lost in thought. Turning her head back to face Duo, she closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of her seat and the fuselage side.  
  
"But," said Duo, "It wasn't so much their fancy acrobatics that scared me, some of those moves a gundam could pull easily, but would be impossible for a fighter. What really scared me were their weapons. At first I thought the lines that would streak out from the enemy ships to mine were targeting lasers, just visible ones. I mean, I didn't think a beam of light that would travel the distance between one ship to another faster than I could actually see the beam move, would actually be a weapon. I realized it was a weapon when the shuttle in front of us was hit, and even if it was a weapon, such a small beam wouldn't look to cause a whole lot of damage either." Duo took a long draw from another drink bulb and let it float up, empty, it rotated slowly in the air currents and tumbled back into the rear section of the ship. Duo watched its slow spinning movements for a short time and continued his story.  
  
"The shuttle at the front was already destroyed, I saw some of its debris drift past us after a minute or two, that was the one carrying generators and electrical conduits, no personnel save the pilot and navigator. I didn't actually see it explode but I saw what was left of it, and it wasn't much. By that time all of the bombers had been shot down and there was only half a fighter group left. They were still buzzing around about a hundred kilometers away; I think we actually got one or two of the buggers in that fight. So that was when the shuttle in front of us took a hit. One hit, one damn hit, right smack dab in the center. A green light beam lanced out from the fray going on above us and struck the ship square in its big white middle. The beam cut strait through the airframe and passed out the other end, the shuttle imploded at first, like the beam was trying to suck the shuttle right into it, and continue on through space. After a second or two, though it seemed like an eternity and then some, the shuttle exploded, a brilliant flash of light that shook our ship. That's when I looked out one of the side windows and saw our right wing take a hit: the wing exploded and sent the ship reeling. I managed to get to the airlock, but when I was in the middle of getting my spacesuit on, the hatch blew and the cabin instantly depressurized, I had just enough time to get my helmet on, I couldn't even grab a tank of air. I was flung out the hatch and drifted in space, watching the battle come to a close. All I had was the few minutes of air in an emergency supply bladder. Luckily our pilot had been smart enough to send a distress signal at the first sign of an attack. So I drifted, trying to breath as little and slowly as possible. I actually lasted half an hour like that, but by the time the shuttle came I was so high from oxygen deprivation and the suppressor drugs the suit had given me, that the shuttle looked like this giant white condor swooping down to snatch me up for a meal. I almost tore my helmet off trying to get away. But I was thrashing around so much I passed out: I'd used up all the oxygen in my system. Luckily the shuttle saw my transponder light and picked me up. The next thing I knew I had 30 people standing over me, all in civilian dress." Duo stopped his story and looked across the isle, out the far window, watching the stars drift ever so slowly in the window.  
  
"Luckily," he continued, "I wasn't seriously injured, just a little leery from the loss of oxygen. After a few minutes my vision cleared and I could think strait. But," sighed Duo, "The bastards came back, they didn't bother to use that freaky ray gun either, so they used kinetic weapons instead. One of the impacts ended up throwing the pilot out of his chair, he snapped his neck when his face smashed into the cockpit window. I told the stewardesses I was capable of flying the ship and told them to take the pilot to the back of the shuttle. So all that was left was for me to pilot us to the closest base. By the time we were under way again a fighter contingent from the fleet carrier Indianapolis had responded to our threat- con signal and had engaged the enemy, but not before the shuttle suffered serious damage to the gimbals and aft thrusters. I was down to only half of the usual maneuverability and in the middle of a war zone. I didn't care where we went, just so long as it was somewhere other than where we were, so I punched the engines without even thinking. The starboard side engine exploded and ripped off a good portion of the right wing, but I managed to limp the shuttle back home while the fighters flew cover for me." Duo reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small gold star with a gold oak leaf on either side, in the center was an engraving of the earth sphere. On the back was etched: 'Lt. Colonel Duo Maxwell awarded for bravery above and beyond the call of duty' with the date Towards Stardate AC 03/24/198. It was attached to a dark blue ribbon with red stripes on either side. Duo handed the medal to Hilde so she could look at it.  
  
"Duo, I never knew you got this, I never even heard of an award ceremony."  
  
"Ya, I know," said Duo, running his hand through his bangs, "They gave it to me in a closed ceremony, President Une gave it to me, she is looking a lot better now that the war is over, not as pale." Releena nodded in agreement, Hilde handed her the medal and she held it up so she could see it. "It's heavy," she said, "No wonder you never wear it."  
  
"Yeah, its heavy alright, it has the weigh of 15 dead enlisted men, 30 pilots, 10 navigator/bombers, 5 marines, 3 captains, a major and 4 civilians."  
  
Hilde hugged Duo from beside him and stroked his cheek, "Why was it classified?"  
  
Duo looked across the isle again to see out the viewport, "I don't really know, other than the obviously new weapons technology, and the fact that they were Sigon, the Preventers supposedly wiped them all out during Indo-China offensive." Duo shrugged and closed his eyes, folding his hands back behind his head he slouched down into his seat and said, "I'm gonna take a nap you two, I was never a big fan of shuttle flights. Wake me up when we get close to the Hub alright?"  
  
"Sure Duo," Hilde said. Releena nodded and smiled at the tired pilot.  
  
Duo yawned and fell asleep on the spot. Hilde turned to Releena and said, "I wish I could do that, fall asleep on the spot like he does."  
  
"Yeah," Releena agreed, "I bet it really comes in handy." Hilde reached over and kissed Duo lightly on the cheek, "Sweet dreams," she whispered into his ear.  
  
"I might as well try and get some sleep too," said Releena.  
  
"I think I will too," said Hilde, already leaning her head against Duo's shoulder with her eyes closed. She breathed deeply for a little bit, but then her breath became shallower, and then finally she drifted off to sleep.  
  
So she can do it after all, thought Releena. Closing her eyes she let her head rest against the back of her chair and the side of the airframe. Her hair drifted up in front of her face but she let it sway around in the air currents, after a few minutes sleep claimed her and she drifted off afloat in a dark pool of dreams.  
  
* * *  
  
Tranquility Halo: During the early days of the colony era, and the few years prior, it was decided that Earth was in need of an orbiting shipyard in order to produce the massive colonies and their various support ships. Work on the first earth Halo was started in the Before Colony Year 2147. It was a joint operation mounted by NASA, Great Britain, France, Germany, Indo- China and the UAC (Union Aerospace Corporation), a massive aeronautical company boasting affiliates in all major countries of the world.  
  
The first colony, called Star Home, was completed in 2152, that year was thus designated After Colony Year 001, or AC 01. Work on the Mobius Halo was completed 4 years latter in A.C. 05. By that time, 3 other small- scale colonies were completed and christened Dawn Treader, Hyperion and Olympus. All three of these colonies were moved completely out of the earth sphere and petitioned for independence from the homeworld. A UN summit meeting was convened and after 2 long years of fierce debate, the 3 colonies were allowed their autonomy. In the face of such news, there was a rallying around the world for a unified global nation. At the same time a massive research operation was being conducted in high Mars orbit, it was considered by many to be the reason the governments of the world hadn't moved towards a unified government. Too many of the pencil pushers considered its operation to be an investment risk if the governments of the world unified. In light of the decision to hold off unification, many people from the earth started moving to the colonies.  
  
In A.C. 021 construction of a new Halo was ordered by the UAC, which had become a very powerful influence within the earth sphere. The Atlas Halo, the 2nd of the two earth Halos, was completed in A.C. 027, its purpose was the construction of warships and research into interplanetary travel. The first warship out of the yard was the commodore class destroyer Hunter-Gratzna, she displaced 850,000 metric tons and was the largest non- colony class vessel to ever be created by any of the halos. However, the Hunter-Gratzna was lost during an inspection of the Mars colony area named Luna Sea. It, along with an entire colony group were reported lost by the research scientists stationed on Phobos. It was reported latter that the massive warship, along with 4 colonies, was completely destroyed in a freak accident involving the PRAI (Phobos Research Associates International), and one of their prototypes. This event sparked the first war between the space colonies and the fledgling GovCentral, the unified earth government, in A.C. 45. The colonies blamed GovCentral for the accident while GovCentral accused the colonies of attempted sabotage. The war lasted 3 years and saw the introduction of rudimentary mobile suits. After the war, and the colonies defeat at the battle of Spartan, a small battle at colony area D that resulted in the capture of the colonies' leader Fredrick Wiendhelm. One week latter an armistice was signed.  
  
The colonies decided that in order for them to survive as a nation, they would need access to a massive shipyard of their own, but they knew that after the first space war, the GovCentral would never let them near either Mobius Halo or Atlas Halo. So they decided to build their own in lunar orbit.  
  
Construction of Tranquility Halo began in A.C. 50 and was completed A.C. 61.  
  
Tranquility Halo was the largest of the three Halos and even had its own hub, or gantry/starship docking arena. The Hub was basically an old colony that was gutted and refitted with malls, arcades, industrial sites, hotels and massive generators to power the hub. Tranquility Hub was the first orbiting starport. 4 years latter GovCentral initiated work on its own hub for Mobius Halo, though it was considerably smaller and less comfortable than Tranquility Hub.  
  
During the Eve Wars, Tranquility was scrapped down to just the rotating colony hub in order to provide pre-fabricated materials for the heavy cruiser Libra. At 700,000 tons she was the 3rd largest warship to be produced by a terrestrial halo. The 2nd largest ship was the fleet carrier Garm, lost in the space war of A.C. 137 it was the flagship of the Earths Sphere Alliance. The Alliance was formed after the collapse of GovCentral, when, during the 2nd space war of A.C. 095, the colony armada dropped a frigate on the GovCentral capitol city Athens.  
  
After the Eve Wars the Unified Earth Sphere under President Une reconstructed Tranquility Halo and repaired its Hub, at the same time they built several mammoth atmosphere generation stations along the moon's equator. While not possessing a viable atmosphere for human's to live in, it still has considerable density. Now Tranquility serves as a springboard for vessels traversing too and from the Mars Terraforming Project.  
  
* * *  
  
Duo opened his eyes partially and shut them again, squinting in the bright cabin light he rubbed his eyes blearily and grumbled. After a 7 hour nap, he was most certainly not a morning person.  
  
"Oi Duo, I didn't think you would ever wake up, I was about to pull out my nine and start shooting blanks." Duo said something unintelligible, sounding like it had the word "breakfast" somewhere in there.  
  
All of a sudden Duo felt a violent shuddering tear through the shuttle, his head lurched forward and he almost knocked heads with Hilde, "What the fuck?" he cursed.  
  
"Relax Duo, we're just docking with the Hub, you know how green pilots always screw up in zero-G," said Hilde, rubbing the side of her head where she had collided with Releena's shoulder.  
  
Duo leaned over and craned his neck so he could see past Releena and Hilde and out of the window. "Looks like he hit the gantry door while it was sliding open, what an idiot, how impatient to you have to be to not wait for the garage door to open." Duo smacked himself in the forehead and let loose with another string of curses.  
  
By the time Hilde and Releena had managed to calm Duo back to his senses, and convinced him it would NOT be a good idea for him to go up front and teach the pilot "a thing or two," the shuttle had arrived at the gate and most of the passengers were up and about trying to grab their luggage.  
  
The three waited for the other passengers to clear the isles and exit the shuttle before they got up and grabbed their own gear. Making their way up to the front of the shuttle they saw that the captain and his navigator were both standing at the exit so that they could say goodbye to the passengers. Both Releena and Hilde made their way out of the shuttle and were walking down the gate ramp when they turned and saw Duo put his bags down at the door of the shuttle and say something to the pilot.  
  
"Have a nice day sir," said the pilot.  
  
Duo turned to the pilot and said, "I just have one question."  
  
"What's that?"  
  
"Did we crash… or were we shot down." Duo picked up his bag and heaved it over his shoulder, exiting the craft, leaving a sputtering pilot and his laughing crewmate.  
  
Walking along the main strip, the trio wondered into a small breakfast café, it was a simple shop, but had a wonderful view of the moon. Duo ordered hashbrowns, eggs, coffee, sausage and pancakes, the girls each had some orange juice, grapefruit and some eggs.  
  
"Ya know," said Duo, his mouth full of sausage, "I don't remember the last time I had a breakfast like this, probably whenever the last time you and I both had a day off at the same time, right Hilde?" Hilde nodded and continued to chew her grapefruit. "Hilde's a great cook," Duo continued, "She always makes the best stuff." Duo grinned at a now blushing Hilde and shoveled another spoonful of eggs into his mouth.  
  
"So I guess army food isn't all that great then," said Releena, trying to help Hilde out.  
  
"It's alright," said Hilde, "At least the hot stuff is pretty good, like the meals we have on the base. But when we're in the field its MRE's." Duo and Hilde both blanched and shook their heads. "Terrible stuff," said Duo.  
  
"M-R-E?" asked Releena.  
  
"Ya, Meal Ready to Eat," replied Hilde, "It's like a T.V. dinner, only cold."  
  
"Hey Releena? When is our flight out to Mars leaving? Pagan never told me or Hilde that bit of the trip."  
  
Releena reached into her traveling purse and produced from it a small planner booklet and thumbed through its pages. Stuck in between two of the pages were 3 oblong sheets of paper: their tickets. "Lets see," she murmured to herself, flipping through the papers and glancing at the tickets, "Looks like we have an hour and a half to kill before the ship to Mars leaves."  
  
Duo had finished up his breakfast and was downing a glass of water, after a long draft from the cup he said, "An hour and a half eh? I'm sure we'll find something to do."  
  
"I dunno," said Hilde, "I'd rather talk about what the heck we're doing going to Mars, I mean Dr. J wasn't exactly specific when he told yall to go right?" Both Duo and Releena nodded. "So what could he want with us?"  
  
"I don't know," said Releena, eating the last morsel of her grapefruit, "Duo, do you have any ideas?"  
  
"Er… Um, not really… no" Duo took a nervous swig of water and hopped up from his seat, stretching quickly, "Why don't we go to like the viewport or something, the moon's quite a sight from there." And with that Duo bounded off down the corridor, heading for the docking area. "Well, at least he left some cash," said Releena, digging into her purse for her own wallet. "Yeah," said Hilde, doing the same.  
  
By the time the two girls had caught up with Duo he had already grabbed a table on the terrace jutting out from one of the hub's viewing decks, there was a large dome shaped window that looked like a giant bubble bulging out from the side of the structure. Once they got over to the table Duo reached over and pulled out a chair for Hilde and did the same on his other side for Releena, "Thanks," the two girls said.  
  
The two girls sat down and watch the moon break the horizon of the rotating hub, the three of them sat in silence for a few minutes until Hilde turned to Duo and asked, "What was that all about back there, is there something your not telling us Duo?" asked Hilde, a hint of annoyance in her voice.  
  
"No, course not babe-"  
  
"Duo," Releena cut in, putting her hand on his arm, "If there is something you know please tell us." Duo looked from one girl to the other, from Hilde to Releena, back and forth, "Alright," he said, "I fold." Duo sighed and looked out at the moon, slowing drifting by as the spaceport hub rotated. "A couple of days ago, maybe 3, if you include the jet lag, I got a peculiar email. There was no subject and didn't tell me who sent it, all there was, was a string of numbers. At the bottom was another string of numbers: Alpha-Zulo-01," Duo rattled off from memory. Turning to face the girls he continued, "The first string of numbers looked like map coordinates, I don't remember what they were exactly, but they put whatever it was supposed to be, right in the middle of Quatre's estate, specifically a small lake Q-man had put in just a few weeks prior. Also, right before the string that looked like Heero's mission confirmation code was 11/27- 2415, both Quatre and myself agreed that those numbers were a date and time for an event. The only thing we don't know is what the event is, but seeing as how today is the 25th, we both suspect that it's Heero trying to tell us when he is hoping to be back."  
  
"I see," said Hilde, "But why wouldn't he just rendezvous with a Preventer's ship or at one of the Halos?"  
  
"Well, because the message wasn't physically sent by Heero himself, I think something has happened, not to mention the letter Releena got from Dr. J." Hilde closed her eyes and shook her head, she really hated to see her friend go through all this, but she knew Releena was strong, stronger than most of them. "So," Duo continued, "From the looks of things Wing Zero sent the message to me, and simply signed it with the mission confirmation code. On the 27th Quatre is going to have Dorothy and some of the Maganacs go to the site." Duo shrugged, "An that's all I know."  
  
"Do you think Heero is alive?" Releena asked, turning to Duo, her face suddenly looking tired and worn. "I don't know," said Duo, "But if he is, he must be in horrible shape, otherwise he would have sent the message himself, and not left it up to Zero's automation."  
  
Releena closed her eyes and breathed quietly for a little while, "Heero…" she murmured. It seemed almost unfair to her, that she always had to be drawn to him, no matter how callous he was, he always managed to show a spec of humanity in him, just a tease to keep her going. She managed to fight back the tears this time, but just barely. She opened her eyes and looked back around. Both Duo and Hilde were gone. Glancing about herself Releena saw that a number of people had crowded up at the railing of the terrace, Hilde and Duo among them. Hilde managed to catch her eye and motioned for Releena to come join them.  
  
"What's the fuss all about," asked Rleena once she had managed to push her way over to wear Hilde and Duo were leaning against the railing.  
  
"That," said Duo, pointing below them, towards the bottom of the bubble-like window.  
  
Passing right below Tranquility Halo and the hub was a queer white shaped craft. It was long and slightly needle shaped with what looked to be riffling grooves etched into its sides, running the entire length, and short stubby wings. The fuselage was spinning at a moderate speed as the ship skirted the lunar atmosphere. Fire trailing behind the oblong craft, it glowed an intense orange as its firry decent streaked across the background of the ashen colored moon. A second latter the grooves in the fuselage closed and left the airframe perfectly smooth. As the bizarre re- entry vehicle skipped across the moon's atmospheric envelope, the nose tilted up and a wave a fire rolled out from underneath the spacecraft. Lurching forward it rushed through the halo's sprawling array of metal girders, beams, gantry arms and vessels. Hurtling upwards its sleek frame blurred steadily as it accelerated passed the hub and out into space, its incredible speed siphoning up tongues of fire that lapped around the internal metal structure of the halo. After a few minutes the fires extinguished themselves in the vacuum of space.  
  
"What the hell…" whispered Hilde to herself as people began to drift away from the terrace in the viewing dome.  
  
"You took the words right out of my mouth babe," said Duo, staring out at the commotion going on outside the giant window. Grimy ovoid shaped repair ships and workmen in spacesuits swarmed the area where the craft had rocketed through the halo, within a few minutes sparks from welding crews and maintenance vehicles could be seen illuminating the dusky interior of the superstructure, casting eerie shadows into the viewing terrace.  
  
The three had wondered back to their seats and were now situated around the table. Releena glanced down at her watch and said, more to herself, "We still have 45 minutes until check in for the flight begins."  
  
Duo glanced around the large open room and fiddled with his braid for a few moments. Finally he reached over and pulled a hardbound book out of his duffel bag. He took of his jacket and draped it loosely over the back of his seat, then sitting down he propped up his feet on an empty chair he had swiped from an adjacent table and started to read quietly to himself. After a few minutes he glanced up from his book and noticed that the two girls had managed to sneak off without him noticing. Bah, I know better than to do that, I'm starting to get sloppy. Duo mentally kicked himself in the arse for not paying better attention, but let it go at that… this time.  
  
Hilde and Releena sat across one another at a quaint little coffee shop about 10 minutes walking time from the main strip, where they had left Duo on the observation terrace. Hilde was munching on a small piece of pecan pie while Releena delicately sipped a piping cup of frothy white chocolate mocha. Both girls sat in silence for while and simply enjoyed one another's presence and the charming environment of the coffee shop.  
  
"You know," said Releena, first to break the silence, "It's a shame we don't get a chance to do this more often, we're always so busy. I don't even remember the last time I saw Dorothy or Catherine."  
  
"I haven't seen Sally for a while either," said Hilde, finishing up the last remnants of her pie crust, "And I used to see her a lot, back when I first joined the Preventers."  
  
"I think," said Releena, eyes closed and in thought, "The last time we were all together was at the Preventer's Christmas Ball, I remember because that was when Noin and my brother announced their engagement."  
  
"Say, that reminds me, Releena, do you think we'll have time to visit them? I thought Milliardo and Lucretzia both volunteered for the Mars terraforming project."  
  
"I don't know, I don't even remember where they said they had moved, so many things have changed on Mars in the past few years. When I first started working with the Board of Colonization there was only one small colony of 500 people, it wasn't even self sufficient and that was something like 3 years ago." Hilde nodded and chewed on a coffee straw. "When we get back, we should throw a party or something, I know Duo would love to see the other pilots."  
  
Releena nodded slightly, but had a distant look on her face, she seemed to be looking at Hilde, but Hilde knew she was seeing right through her, deep into the cold maw of space where she hoped, nay, knew Heero was adrift and alive, if just barely.  
  
Hilde reached her hand out and touched Releena's, "He's alive you know, he wouldn't die on you."  
  
"I know," murmured Releena.  
  
"Duo always said what Heero lacked in common sense, he made up for in gundanium plated spandex shorts."  
  
"You know," chuckled Releena, "I always wondered how the hell he managed to squeeze into those."  
  
Hilde guffawed and drooped her head in her hands while her body shook with bouts of laughter, "What's an even more interesting question is, where does he keep that gun of his, its gotta get in the way of something." Releena and Hilde were both laughing so hard that the other patrons of the store were beginning to toss them odd sidelong glances.  
  
"You know," ventured Hilde, "I think we should go back and see what Duo's up to, it may be hazardous to other people's health to leave him alone." Releena mockingly hit Hilde on her arm, "You're so cruel, Mrs. Maxwell indeed." Both girls walked out of the coffee shop laughing and in high spirits.  
  
Hilde and Releena found Duo exactly where they had left him, with the addition of a book in his hand. He was leaning back in his metal chair with one arm propped up behind his head, while the other held an ornately bound blue hardback book.  
  
"Whatcha reading sweetie?" asked Hilde.  
  
"Something Quatre let me barrow."  
  
"Oh really, mind if I take a look?" Duo marked his place with a silver bookmark and handed the book over to Hilde. Opening it up she skimmed through a couple of pages and looked back up at Duo with a perplexed expression.  
  
Releena leaned over and craned her neck so that she could read over Hilde's shoulder. Squinting her eyes, she looked back up at Duo and said, "You can actually read that?"  
  
"Of course," said Duo. Hilde handed it back to him and shrugged. "Would you mind reading a little of it to us?" she asked.  
  
"Sure," said Duo, thumbing through the pages till he got the very beginning. "Its in Latin," he said, "The book is called The Aeneid, it's written by some ancient guy named Virgil."  
  
"That's ok," said Hilde, somewhat interested now in what Duo was reading.  
  
Duo nodded and started to read aloud:  
  
"Arma virumque cano, Trojae qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit litora, multum ille et terries jactatus et alto vi superum, saevae memorem Junonis ob iram."  
  
"And what is that in English?" asked Releena. Duo paused and reread a few times the lines he had just cited. "Just a sec," he said. A few more seconds passed and he nodded his head, "Alright," he said. "Now this is what it means, at least as best as I can translate." Duo read the lines over once more and began again:  
  
"I sing of warfare and a man at war.  
  
From the sea-coast of Troy in early days  
  
He came to Italy by destiny,  
  
To our Lavinian western shore,  
  
A fugitive, this captain, buffeted  
  
Cruelly on land as on the sea  
  
By blows from powers of the air- behind them  
  
Baleful Juno in her sleepless rage."  
  
"I'm impressed Duo," said Releena, "I didn't think anyone ever bothered to read those old stories."  
  
"No one ever does," replied Duo, "Quatre just happened to have this sitting on his shelf. So I asked him if I could barrow it. He didn't mind cause he didn't know enough Latin to understand it."  
  
"I see," said Hilde, digging through her bag.  
  
"What are you looking for honey?"  
  
"Chapstick."  
  
"Oh… hrm, I might have some in my duffel, lemme check." Duo hopped out of his seat and started rummaging through his bag. He managed to procure the desired object and tossed it over to Hilde, who promptly shared it with Releena. Duo stuffed his book back into his bag and heaved it up over his shoulder.  
  
"Time to go already?" asked Releena, seeing that Duo was already picking up both her bag and Hilde's  
  
"Yup," he said. Hilde looked up and grinned at him, she went up and kissed him on the cheek, "Thanks," she said.  
  
"No problem," grunted Duo, lugging the bags over his shoulder. The trio headed off towards the terminal gate listed on Releena's ticket stubs, every time they passed one of the large blue numbered signs they would glance over at Releena, who would shake her head. Finally they reached the gate numbered 27D, both Hilde and Duo glanced at Releena who nodded vigorously, affirmative.  
  
Coming up the brief staircase Duo started chuckling to himself, realizing how funny they must have looked, always expectantly staring over at Releena every time they came up to a terminal gate.  
  
"Baggage check," declared a young dark skinned woman.  
  
Releena went over to the large glass-polymer window and looked out at the docking gantry. Making a concerned face, she walked over to where the dark skinned lady was standing.  
  
"Excuse me, ma'am, but where is the starship to Mars? Surely that little ship isn't it."  
  
The lady craned her neck so she could see out the window from where she was standing, stretching the fabric of her white blouse. "No miss, it isn't. That's a spaceplane. It's going to take you to the starship that's at a refueling station, it will ferry your baggage there as well." Releena nodded and thanked the woman, then headed over to where Duo and Hilde were standing.  
  
Duo had already dropped their baggage off at the register booth and paid the weigh in fee. "Oi," he said, "I don't know how I'm going to handle a two day flight."  
  
"You could just sleep it off," said Hilde, rummaging through her carry on bag looking for a MD player. "Duo, do you know if we remembered to pack batteries?" Duo shrugged and started to look through his own duffel bag.  
  
"Found em," called Duo, "We packed enough to power a gundam, I don't remember ever putting this many in here."  
  
"Ah, so that's where I put em all," said Hilde, pulling out a half- dozen or so packages of batteries out of Duo's bag.  
  
"Hey, Rleena? What do you plan to do for the flight? Its like 40 hours or something."  
  
"I don't know Duo, I brought a book to read and some music, plus I have the two of you to talk too." Duo nodded and sauntered over to a young stewardess, "Excuse me miss," he said, "Do you know if there are any in flight movies on the Mars starship?"  
  
"I don't know," replied the young lady, "This is my first time to fly on an interplanetary vessel."  
  
"Ah," said Duo, a hint of disappointment sneaking into his tone, "How long have you been working as a stewardess?"  
  
The girl thought for a moment and nodded her head slightly, counting mentally. "One year, 3 months and 12 days," she replied, a great deal of weariness in her tone.  
  
Duo jumped when he felt someone tapping him on the shoulder, wheeling around he recognized the man standing in front of him as the older gentleman from the shuttle flight. The man extended his hand in greeting and smiled generously, "Colonel Maxwell, correct?"  
  
"Uh, yeah, who are you," said Duo, hesitantly shaking the man's hand.  
  
"Dr. Wade," said the gentleman, "It's far out to finally meet one of you kids, I'm a friend of Howard's, he'd always be telling me stories about yall, especially you Duo."  
  
Duo withdrew his hand from the grasp of the strange man and eyed him curiously. He seemed nice enough, had a bit of a hippy streak in him, just like Howard. "How do you know Howard?" he asked.  
  
"Howard and myself go way, way back. We worked with Dr. Yoshinto on the Vernier Project."  
  
"Dr. Yoshinto? I've never heard of the guy," said Duo, now genuinely interested.  
  
"Yeah," said Wade, "Dr. Joseph Yoshinto."  
  
Duo scratched his head and thought to himself for a moment, then asked, "You don't mean Dr. J, do you?"  
  
"That's the guy, all of the other fellas started calling themselves by the first letter of their first name to throw off the Alliance, back when we were designing the gundams."  
  
"Er… right, right," said Duo, running his hand trough his bangs. Dr. Wade was quite the energetic fellow for being as old as the other "doctors".  
  
"So, Duo, I'm assuming your on this flight as per Dr. J's request, am I right?" asked Dr. Wade, very serious all of a sudden.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Did he tell you why?"  
  
"No, not really," said Duo shaking his head, "He sent a request to Releena, Pagan is actually the one who told us."  
  
"Pagan?"  
  
"He's kinda like her butler, really nice guy with a good taste for scotch."  
  
"I see," Dr. Wade's already arched eyebrow amazed Duo by curly upwards even further, so far that his hair seemed to shift backwards somewhat.  
  
"So who's the old guy talk'n to Duo?" asked Releena, leaning over so no one but Hilde could hear her. Hilde shrugged and said, "I dunno, never seen the guy before in my life, but I'm gonna find out." Hilde took Releena by the wrist and guided her friend over to Duo and the peculiar gentleman.  
  
Hilde and Releena walked quietly up beside Duo while he and the man conversed back and forth for a minute or two. The man stopped talking and said, "Hey man, don't be rude, aren't you going to like, introduce me to your friends Duo?" Duo did a barely noticeable double take when he saw that both Hilde and Releena were now standing beside him.  
  
"Er, yeah Wade. Hilde, Releena, this bizarre individual is Dr. Wade, physicist and associate of the other 'good doctors'." Duo turned and gestured to his two lady friends and spoke to Dr. Wade, "Wade, these two babes are my traveling companions, Ms. Releena Dorlin and Captain Schbieker, Hilde, she's my honey." Duo wrapped his arm around Hilde and gave her an extravagant hug.  
  
"Er…" was all Hilde could say, blushing a bright crimson hue.  
  
While the four were exchanging greetings and shaking hands the flight attendant that Duo had spoken to earlier sauntered up to them, tapping Hilde on the shoulder she said, "Excuse me miss, the spaceplane is boarding, have all of you gone through baggage check?"  
  
"Yes," replied Duo, now turning to face the young lady.  
  
"Alright," she said, "Please board the spaceplane through the gantry way."  
  
Duo nodded at his compatriots and they all walked over to the steel gantry door, holding up their passports to a middle aged man in a blue flight captain's uniform, complete with gold epaulets on his shoulder. The flight captain took their passports and scanned the barcode on the back with a handheld scanner. Glancing down at the computer screen he verified their photo ID's and typed in his own designation code registering their destination: High Mars Orbit – PRAI Station, SatArray 4.  
  
Handing back their passports, the captain smiled at them and said, "Enjoy your flight, and remember, no one loves you, or your money more than Orion Spaceways."  
  
Both Duo's and Hilde's eyes ticked involuntarily while they received their passports, "I'm sure," muttered Wade as he handed the captain his own passport. The captain waved the scanning baton over Wade's passport barcode, it 'bleeped' at him twice and a large black screen filled his computer monitor, the words CLASSIFIED EYES ONLY blinking in large red military stencil print. "Um, Dr… Wade, would you please step forward and let me scan your retinas and left thumb." Dr. Wade did as asked and placed his chin against a small padded bar while a scanning machine appeared out of the wall right in front of him.  
  
Duo had been expecting a standard scanning bar to materialize out of the wall and initiate a standard retina scan, but instead the machine that appeared looked like a bizarre spider: a center cubicle mechanism attached to a robotic arm that protruded from out of the opening in the wall, attached to the main body were 5 or 6 spindly looking metal arms, each with a micro laser fastened to a single robotic finger. The arms approached Wade's left eye while spinning adroitly on the gimbled body. One of the arms came within just millimeters of his eye, a small pinprick of light lanced out and struck a point somewhere on his iris, the next arm swung in with expert precision and tagged another point on Wade's eye, then a 3rd arm and 4th, eventually all 6 arms were spinning and maneuvering about trying to scan his iris, all movements absolutely precise and adroit. All told, the process only took a matter of seconds, perhaps 7 or 8 at the most.  
  
Dr. Wade stepped back from the scanning mechanism and took his passport back from the outstretched arm of the captain. Duo and the two girls had both stood by and waited just inside the gantry door while he received the iris scan, coming up to the group he fell in step beside Duo. "New scanning method eh?" asked the pilot as the group made their way down the slate gray interior of the passage, light fixtures glowing every few feet.  
  
"Yeah," said Wade, he took a moment or two to reposition his backpack on his shoulder before he continued, "The spacing industry decided to put it in, its supposed to be much, much harder to fool than the bar scanners, it's supposed to be able to see through contact lens-style fake irises, you know, espionage type stuff."  
  
"I see," replied Duo.  
  
The 4 of them reached the end of the gantry way and stepped into the immaculate white light of the spaceplane's interior. Though smaller than the earth shuttle, it was far more luxurious looking. Duo wasn't really surprised though, most of the spaceplanes were chartered out by businessmen to ferry themselves between the different colony groups, the moon, and the earth halos.  
  
They were the last to board but weren't too hard pressed to find seats, seeing as there were probably only about 30 people onboard by Hilde's count (not including them).  
  
The spaceplane's seating arrangement was different from the shuttle's, only 2 people could sit per side of the main isle, so Hilde and Releena sat together while Wade and Duo sat on the other side of the isle, (Hilde and Duo both taking isle seats).  
  
They hadn't been seated long when the pilot's voice (in a thick Russian accent as far as Duo could tell), came over the com, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. We will be departing in roughly 2 minutes, our estimated flight time from here to fueling station 3 is approximately 17 minutes, we request that you observe our no smoking policy for the duration of this flight, and that you remain seated and with your safety belt fastened securely at all times. Thank you." The intercom bleeped as the captain turned it off.  
  
After a minute or two, the pilot fired the chemical verniers and maneuvered the spaceplane away from the Tranquility Hub, after a few moments of he throttled up the main liquid fuel rocket and the spaceplane lurched forward, a G-force of 1.9 settled quietly against the passengers.  
  
The burn lasted for approx. 2 minutes, after which the pilot powered down the engine to 27% output and set his course for the fuel depot. From the Halo, the spaceplane looked like a chunk of coal, hurtling through space attached to the tail of a comet.  
  
The trip to the fueling station took slightly less time than expected, taking a mere 15 minutes. The group, along with the rest of the passengers, waited for their luggage to be transferred to the starship before they could make their way down the stations docking gantry to the cabin.  
  
During their approach flight to the station, they had managed to get a glimpse of the massive fueling station, both Hilde and Duo having worked for the Preventers, had already seen many of them, showed a mild degree of interest in the gargantuan facility. Whereas Releena, though accustomed to space flight, had never seen such a place.  
  
While the station was not anywhere near the size of a colony, it was still of an imposing stature. The station was all built around a massive rotating disk that measured roughly four and a half kilometers in width. Attached to the disk was a single steel tower the ran strait through the center of the station, reaching upwards a kilometer in both directions, attached to the 300 meter wide pole were the various fuel storage tanks. Every 350 meters was a pumping station: large ovoid contraptions bristling with pipes and conduits. Arrayed outwards from the central rotating disk were dozens of gantry arms and adjacent docking passages, starships and warships alike birthed in the gargantuan docking arenas. Based on top of the disk itself were various machine shops, spaceplane hangers, a handful of restaurants and, of course, passenger waiting areas. At the bottom of both poles (where the station merged with the fuel towers), was a large building, jutting outward from the metal disk a good 300 meters, almost to the first pump/lift station. That was the tower control station, all fuel was directed down (or up, depending on which tower) the fueling tower and into the desired piping conduit that ran through the station center out to the various docking arenas where the starships could suck down the much need propellant. 11 such stations dotted the space between the 17 colony areas, the moon and the earth sphere (both earth halos each had their own additional 5 support stations).  
  
The spaceplane itself wasn't large enough to merit docking birth (though it was the largest class of spaceplanes, measuring 77 meters from stem to stern), so the captain received clearance from the flight tower to dock in one of the massive spaceplane hangers. Upon arrival, several large ATV type vehicles, each towing 3 or 4 trailers parked under the fuselage of the spaceplane, a ramp descended from its belly and luggage began to tumble out from the craft. The luggage was put on the trailers and after 10 minutes they departed, only 7 of the trailers were full.  
  
The captain powered down the ships systems and opened the hatch to let the passengers disembark. The spaceplane sat a good 4 meters off the ground, so a staircase was wheeled over to mate with the opened hatch, a warm breeze ripe with the smell of machine tools drifted in through the hatch.  
  
After making their way down the stairs, the group had wandered into one of the adjacent passenger waiting areas and had taken seats right next to the large viewport.  
  
"Man," said Duo, plopping down in one of the black leather seats, "There has got to be an easier way to fly."  
  
"I concur," said Releena, "But then again, not many people go to the Mars Project, so the spacing companies are all kinda stingy when it comes to passenger comfort for those of us going there."  
  
Duo grumbled some more put his hand over his eyes. Hilde set beside him listening to music whiled Releena sat on the other side of him, Dr. Wade was standing up in front of the viewport checking out their starship.  
  
Most people who envisioned star flight thought that everyone zipped around in sleek, sexy looking flashy spaceships, Wade knew that this was simply not true, the ship in front of him would attest to that. While it did have some simple elegance to it, there were no graceful curving lines and it was anything but sleek, and far, far from sexy.  
  
In the early days of space transit, engineers had tried to sell their designs based on looks alone, and not practicality or performance. Most ship designs had sacrificed dependability or utilitarian usage for supra- aerodynamic looking spacecraft that were more reflective to the luxury super-yachts of the late 21st century (Before Colony Era).  
  
After 125 years of spaceflight, in 2080, the first self-sustaining fusion torch was tested on an unmanned ship called the Out of Band. Before that, starship range had been limited by the amount of fissionable material (fission powered ships were extremely fuel dependant and inefficient) they could hold, but their flashy designs generally did not allow for room enough to contain large quantities of fuel, so travel was generally limited to the moon and a few Mars missions and one or two Jupiter missions (which lead to the discovery of H3 and the self-sustaining fusion torch). However, the OOB's first test flight was also its last, an error in one of the flight computer's sub routines injected the H3 containment pod with pure H+, the proton wave caused the uranium left over from the activation reaction mass (all fusion reactions first start with a uranium fission reaction) to achieve instant, uncontrolled critical mass. The resulting high radiation detonation in close proximity to earth rendered 3 of the 11 orbiting microwave power relays sterile, the power loss was felt all throughout the Congo, Chile, Mexico, Australia, and a large part of Northern Asia.  
  
In 2083 the Out Of Band II flew the first fusion-powered flight from the Jovian Corporation's microwave station, orbiting 3200 km above earth, (the only spacebound structure capable of housing and maintaining the test craft), to Queng Ho Relay, a research station in orbit around Jupiter. The OOB II made the trip in a record time of 280 hours without so much as even a flicker in its drive flare. Within 7 months of the OOB II's flight, Pratt and Whitney, along with Grumman and Rolls Royce had gone from manufacturing fission/lox engines to fusion-torch drives; the era of interplanetary transit had officially been ushered in.  
  
The resulting success of the OOB II finally convinced ship manufacturers that though it was nice to have sleek looking ships, for the rough and tumble world of vacuum space travel, sometimes it was better to take the no-frills approach. Though the first ships made with self- sustaining fusion drives were clunky, unattractive with airframes so convoluted they looked more like a piece of "modern" art than a high tech spacecraft; they got the job done.  
  
Manned spaceflight was revolutionized even further when Dr. Wascheue designed the Adamist type starship. The Adamist was essentially a mass produced fusion drive mounted at the end of furro-fibrous tube that was made of indo-steel arranged in a honeycomb like lattice. The tube was then filled with all of the components and machines that monitored, and regulated the engines. The ship was also fitted with a standardized power plant that came with pre-fabricated solar panels (used as backups only, most of the power was generated from the energy overflow of the fusion reaction). The ship was fitted with nothing more than the generator, the central spine-like tube (and the mechanical components housed within), and the engine/drive tube; all other components such as crew quarters, electronic warfare modules, cargo modules etc, could then be attached as necessary in a double rotating manner about the central support tube (looking much like a double helix of DNA). The simple packaging style of Wascheue's prototype, nicknamed The Pelican, was a huge success. Compartment/module manufacturing companies cropped up everywhere, offering the latest and greatest technologies, while leaving the heavy hitting companies to vie over production rights of the main skeletal frame.  
  
In over 300 years, not much had changed, resulting in the hulking ship that drifted lazily in the docking berth 20 meters from Dr. Wade and where he stood: leaning casually against the polymer glass window, light glinting in from the docking strobes.  
  
The ship moored in front of the window was roughly 400 meters in length with a boom of 23 meters. The cockpit was a dark blister bulging from the top end of the nose, smaller sensor blisters and antennae were splotched all over the outer hull, which was painted a slate gray; bright strobes were placed up and down the length of the ship, acting as running lights. On the side of the ship, the name ALVA BARTON was stenciled onto the side, a few meters below the cockpit blister. The Alva Barton was essentially of the original adamist starship design, it had a few extra permanent features that were left out of the original design, but it still carried the basic concept of a single central spine connected to an immensely powerful engine. The main difference between the ship and her predecessors was a permanent cockpit, in the original design not even the cockpit terroid was meant to be permanent, it was figured that specific duties would call for specifically designed cockpits and bridge layouts. Eventually companies decided that it would be cheaper to simply retain a fleet of ships, each tailored to their specific duties, instead of constantly switching out various hull components whenever a ship would change tasks. Even with this change in production, the theory of compartmentalization still held strong and allowed for very precise customization, so the various module production companies stayed in business, and spaceflight was made even more convenient.  
  
Fitted to the Alva Barton's hull was a small passenger module, the logo for the InGen Corporation was stamped on its starboard side in dark blue. Just aft of the passenger module was a massive storage bay, in it was held passenger luggage and the equipment ordered by the Mars Terraforming Project. Farthest aft, and just fore of the engine/power plant, was the fuel storage. All four compartments: passenger, cargo bay, fuel storage and power plant, were all spherical in shape, (though the power plant was considerably larger than the previous three), making the ship look like a giant snake that had wolfed down 4 massive eggs.  
  
Dr. Wade turned from the glass window and paced back across the thin, mute brown shaded carpet to sit across from Duo, who was busily conversing with the blond headed girl next to him. He had been thinking, even though she didn't hold as prestigious a position as "queen of the world", Releena Peacecraft/Dorlin was still all but a household name. Wade found it somewhat curious that people weren't making much of a fuss over the fact that she was traveling around in public like this. Wade mentally shrugged it off and marked the stray thought up as due to simple human decency (as little of it as there seemed to be nowadays), and the fact that people were happy and content, so why not just let the poor girl live in peace?  
  
Wade yawned and drifted off to sleep, his back arched uncomfortably in the hard backed chairs of the spaceport terminal, halogen light fixtures buzzing quietly above him.  
  
Wade's eyes opened slowly and he blinked the sleep out of his eyelids. Sitting up slowly, he felt several of the joints in his back pop. Wade yawned and stood up, popping more joints in his legs. Looking across from him at where Duo was sleeping, he saw that both Hilde and Releena were leaning against his shoulders, both girls breathing shallowly, like they were on the verge of waking up.  
  
Dr. Wade glanced down at his watch, 3:37 AM; they had slept for roughly three and a half hours. The flight board at fixed to the wall at the far end of the terminal showed that their flight would be boarding in a few minutes, Wade decided to let the 'kids' sleep a little longer.  
  
He wondered around the terminal for a few minutes; buying a small strawberry shake from a wall vending machine Wade decided to go back and wake up his sleeping friends so that they could get all their luggage in order before the boarding announcement.  
  
Duo awoke to someone shaking him by the shoulder, his eyes fluttered open, pupils suddenly expanding and contracting in the first few seconds of awareness.  
  
"Good morning sleepy head," said Hilde, the last remnants of sleep still lingering in her voice. Duo grinned a half-crooked toothy smile and yawned. "Time to go already?" asked Duo, slowly raising himself out of the uncomfortable chair.  
  
"Yup," said Dr. Wade, "The call for baggage check was made about 5 minutes ago, and all of the heavy stuff is already on the ship. All we have left is our carryon luggage."  
  
Duo nodded, still half asleep, and heaved his duffel bag up over his shoulder, he then reached down and grabbed Hilde's bag for her. Making his way to the check in desk, Duo stole a quick look outside at their ship, it wasn't pretty, but he'd flown that type long enough to know they were a dependable breed of starship, though not as flashy as some of they larger warships.  
  
Dr. Wade followed behind Duo, lugging his own bag over his shoulder, while carrying Releena's bag over his other shoulder.  
  
"I'm sorry sir, but passenger check in doesn't start for another 10 minutes, I am going to have to ask you to sit back down," said the flight stewardess behind the counter in a tone so cheerful it almost made Duo wretch right there in front of her.  
  
"Look miss, there aren't but a handful of folks on this flight," said Duo calmly, "Its three AM in the bloody morning for Christ sake, can't you just let us on so we can stow our gear and get some more sleep?" The amount of blood in Duo's eyes was beginning to alarm the stewardess, not to mention his apparent lack of sleep and high-strung attitude.  
  
"A-alright," she stammered, "You may go ahead and board, just let me have your ticket stubs."  
  
The four passed and each handed her their tickets, followed by another dozen or sow passengers, eager to get on board and resume sleeping.  
  
The passenger cabin wasn't as luxurious as the cabin on board the shuttle from Tranquility (even though it had broken down right before their approach to the fueling station, leaving them several hours behind schedule, luckily their flight to the Mars Project hadn't been due to leave for several hours after their arrival). Duo reclined in the soft padded cushioned seat and closed his eyes, Hilde and Releena, one on either side of him, did the same. Across the isle, Dr. Wade spent several minutes looking out the viewpoint, watching the bustle of the starport.  
  
By the time the pilot had ran all of the system checks and managed to slowly drift the hulking ship away from its berthing moor, Duo and his companions were lost to sleep. The pilot opened the throttle a hair and allowed small doses of fuel to seep into the engines, boosting the Alva Barton away from the rotating depot at an easy 1.4 G's. Once clear of the 500 km mark, he set the autopilot and retired to his own quarters.  
  
The autopilot ran its opening system checks and started to slowly dump more and more power into the engines, the fusion torch bulged and spewed out even more heat and power. The ramp up time to its maximum rate of acceleration was estimated at 2 hours. The autopilot recalibrated it's gimbals and initiated a final role, after which its course was locked. The autopilot switched to passive maneuvering and receded back into the system's subroutine.  
  
The Alva Barton rocketed away from the station at 13 km/second. Her eventual maximum speed would be achieved at 250 km/second, the flight was estimated to take 42 hours to traverse the 360,000,000 km to Mars. 2 hours were allotted for ramp up while the rest was to be spent at maximum thrust. From the fueling depot, her drive flare looked just like any other star burning bright amidst an armada of light.  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
Space travel has never been a simple affair. In the early days of space flight, the largest problem facing mankind was the simple matter of actually putting a person into orbit. However, in the After Colony Year 198 that aspect of travel was all but routine, and the real problem was keeping the spacing lanes open. Thousands of interplanetary vessels, support ships, pleasure boats and warships navigated the vacuum between the Earth, the moon, and the colony clusters. The problem was exactly like that of an air traffic controller, only cubed.  
  
The dilemma of coordinating the every day travel of Earth's spaceways was left up to the halos: Mobius handled civilian flights of all descriptions while Atlas ran interdiction duties and orchestrated the movement military ships.  
  
When Mobius detected an object that had seemingly originated from the moon, it opened a com channel hailing the unidentified vehicle, following standard procedure. When the vessel in question failed to respond to hails on all civilian band radio frequencies and the emergency frequencies, the object was tagged as a priority and handed over toAtlas which immediately notified the SD (strategic defense) network and began to actively track the approaching object.  
  
Once the object crossed the 70,000 km mark, Atlas handed the contact over to SD Command. At 35,000 km the SD network continued to passively hail the oncoming craft and began to acquire a firing solution. At 20,000 km SD command ceased hailing the unidentified craft and loaded a firing solution into 7 of the 168 orbiting laser platforms and called up 2 of the patrolling guided missile frigates to acquire their own firing solution. At 19,500 km both guided missile frigates Armstrong and Valisk confirmed their firing solutions with the SD network. At 19,000 km the object was confirmed to be a mobile suit class machine after remote cameras documented the craft shunting off a large metal casing. The casing was painted pale white, while attached to the mobile suit it had completely encased the machine, making it look like an oddly shaped bullet. The casing, now in two pieces after separating itself from the mecha, tumbled through empty space for a number of seconds, then suddenly exploded: small fragments of burning metal shot out in all directions, their lights slowly dwindled as the chemical flames used up all of their fuel mass. SD Command relayed the image of the explosion to the two frigates, and logged the incident, re-designating the craft as an attack-capable vessel.  
  
Fleet Captain Nuwen stood on the bridge of the Armstrong, ready to give the fire command. At 58, he had lived through two space wars and learned to trust his instincts. Another thing James Nuwen leaned during 38 years of service in the navy was that he was a man of no particular ambition. He didn't brownnose the higher ups and didn't ask for, nor expect favors from his junior officers, essentially he was willing to retain the relatively low rank of Fleet Captain (which was essentially an over glorified regular captain, or an underglorified major, depending on how you wanted to look at it).  
  
After 25 minutes of silence from SD Command, Capt. Nuwen called up a visual image of the target craft. It was humanoid shaped, like most mobile suits, and was painted a pristine white, scarred with scorch marks and impact fractures. Capt. Nuwen noticed that it wasn't yawing or gyrating all over the place, and that even though its vernier thrusters weren't operating at the moment it was still making a strait beeline for earth. Small fragments of debris dislodged themselves from the arms and drifted up and behind the mecha in a cloud of silvery substance.  
  
Capt. Nuwen was about to close the vidlink when he noticed that the mobile suit was wielding an incredibly large weapon on its left arm, the one that had been moving, causing chips of armor to flake off.  
  
"Com, I want you to open a secure line to SD Command," said Capt. Nuwen.  
  
"Yes sir!" barked that communications officer sharply, "Communication line open and secure sir."  
  
Captain Nuwen cleared his throat and made it a point to speak clearly and distinctly, "Strategic Defense Command, this is Fleet Captain James Nuwen of the Earth Federation Naval vessel Armstrong. I have been issued orders to obtain a firing solution on an unidentified mobile suit approaching Earth space at a high rate of speed," Nuwen glanced over at his command console and continued: "The craft is currently 17,000 km from Earth, unless I receive a stand down command I will initiate fire at 15,000 km. Repeat, I will initiate fire at 15,000 km. The mobile suit class vessel is maintaining at least some level of operation and has both ignored all attempts at hailing and made no attempt to try and display either a state of emergency or a state of noncombatant. Again, if I receive no orders from SD Command OR Atlas Halo in approximately 20 minutes, I will fire upon this craft. Nuwen, out." The link closed with a hiss of static.  
  
Capt. Nuwen sat down in his captain's chair and leaned back, head resting in the palms of his hands. Nuwen looked about the bridge and drew in a long breath of processed air. Looking down at his watch, he stared at the minute hand tick off a few notches. After a few more minutes he stood up, "Fire control, I want tubes1 and 2 loaded with flares, we'll see if he responds to a shot across the bow. Tell me when the missiles have been loaded with the firing solution."  
  
The fire control officer issued orders to his men in the missile rooms and awaited their green light. A few seconds ticked by and a small pale green light flickered in the corner of his panel. Entering his own personal firing code he flipped up a large red safety latch and exposed a dull black button. "Firing solution accepted and ready."  
  
"Alright, fire on my mark. Three, two, one, mark."  
  
The fire control officer pressed the button and the entire frigate shuttered as the rockets leaped from their tubes and accelerated away from the ship, their fission engines leaving flashback spots in the eyes of the bridge crew.  
  
The missiles streaked away from the ship at a solid 50 g's. Reaching their target in less than 9 seconds they detonated in a duel flash of sparks and sub-flares that sputtered around in space and spewed sparks in all directions.  
  
"No visual response or attempt at communication from the target vehicle," confirmed the communications officer.  
  
Capt. Nuwen nodded thoughtfully and gave the order for the missile rooms to stand down for the time being. More minutes ticked by, then ten, then fifteen. Nuwen looked up at his vidscreen that remained blank… and there were no new communiqués from either Halo or SD Command.  
  
"Very well then, Mr. Ortiese, load tubes one and two with EMP warheads and tubes 27-39 with HEAT rounds, I want to avoid killing this lunatic, but I will if I have to. Launch tubes one and two as soon as you have recomputed the firing solution."  
  
Fire control officer Lt. Ortiese punched a string of numbers into his console and waited for the green light at the corner of his desk to light up. After a moment or two it flickered; Lt. Ortise pressed the firing button and the Armstrong shuttered again as the missile engines roared to life.  
  
From the bridge, the missile detonation set at 200 meters to target looked perfect, both warheads separated from their delivery rockets and coasted in to the preset range. Once at the location, their micro-nuclear payload detonated, causing a searing bright flash of white, followed by a dark blue electron pulse wave. The wave rolled over the target mobile suit and continued to expand outward into space. After a few seconds it was apparent that the EMP had no discernable effect on the target.  
  
"Alright," said Capt. Nuwen, "Mr. Ortiese, if you would please re- compute our firing solution and arm tubes 27-39, once the target has reached the 15,000 km mark launch the missiles in two volleys of 6 missiles each, 2 second intervals please."  
  
"Full missile payload aye," replied the fire control officer.  
  
Nuwen watched the mobile suit target as it plowed through space, he didn't really care what its intentions were: he wasn't going to let it reach earth. If it had been a friendly it would have made at least some attempt to make that known to him. The fact that it had withstood a sizeable EMP attack suggested electronic warfare hardening, which in turn suggested some sort of military involvement, and it certainly wasn't listed as a Federation Navy craft.  
  
"Target is approaching the 15,000 km mark, should I fire sir?"  
  
Nuwen bent over his command console and flipped a switch to turn on a small recorder. Again he cleared his throat and spoke into the mike. "I am Fleet Captain James Nuwen of the Federation Naval Vessel Armstrong, I have been ordered by SD Command to acquire a target lock on an unidentified mobile suit on a direct course for Earth. After receiving no further instructions from SD Command, and with the target approaching the SD failsafe point of 15,000 km, I am now issuing a fire command without the direct order from either SD Command or Halo Port Authority. The time is 2023 hours and 22 seconds, my witness is Lt. Vincent Ortiese- Fire Control Officer." Nuwen turned to Lt. Ortiese and said, "State your full name and rank for the record please."  
  
Mr. Ortiese nodded and spoke into the mike, "I am Lt. Vincent Sterling Ortiese, Federation Naval officer, serving as Fire Control Officer. I am the witness of Fleet Captain Nuwen, the time is 2023 hours and 57 seconds."  
  
Nuwen turned off the mike and thanked the Mr. Ortiese. "Alright," he said, "Lieutenant, fire!"  
  
Lt. Ortiese again pressed the firing button, this time the frigate bucked and shuttered against the immense thrust output of the missiles, their chemical rocket engines straining to propel the incredible mass of a full ordinance payload away from the ship and towards their target.  
  
Accelerating away from the ship, and their chemical rockets exhausted, the missiles' fission drive kicked in, flaring their drive tube absolutely white, washing out all visible light spectrums in the immediate space around them.  
  
The second battery of missiles ejected themselves from their launch cradles and trundled through space to intercept their target, their fission drives straining to propel the mass of a full weapons payload.  
  
Aboard the Armstrong, Capt. Nuwen was watching the vidscreen and radar, the missiles were holding true to target, it was estimated that the first cluster would reach the mobile suit in 23 seconds.  
  
"Sir! Atlas Halo is requesting a communication link," announced the communication officer.  
  
"Well patch them through, bring it up on the big screen."  
  
"Yes sir."  
  
Half a second latter President Une's face appeared looming over the crew of the Armstrong. "Fleet Captain Nuwen, you are ordered to stand down, repeat, you are ordered to stand down. Disengage the target and return to your designated patrol route."  
  
Nuwen risked a quick glance down at his command display, he had only 8 seconds until the missiles impacted the target. Without thinking, Captain Nuwen reached into the front of his shirt and produced a silver missile key, he plunged it into the lock at the top of his console and twisted it a quarter turn to the left, right beside it a clear plastic covering popped up, exposing a large red button underneath it, the words Missile Self Detonation were printed in large yellow letters right above it. Nuwen didn't hesitate to push it.  
  
On board the missiles, their flight computers registered the self- destruct command: the flow of super hot ions out the thruster nozzle was instantly reversed by clamping the drive tube closed, causing a backwash of plasma to pour into the fission reaction's containment field and flow into the engine compartment, creating a miniature fusion reaction. The resulting heat spiked so incredibly high that the plasma backwash firing upwards towards the warhead broiled the warhead and all if its internal components, causing the very molecules that it was comprised of to disassociate instantaneously, rendering the weapon sterile.  
  
At the exact same moment, all 12 missiles evaporated in a hazy cloud of super-energized sup atomic particles that erupted and sputtered from what used to be the mass-space occupied by the missiles.  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
Passing through the debris field left by the detonation of the missiles in front of Wing Zero, the autopilot raised the buster shield to guard against any possible collision damage. Once within 15,000 km of the Earth, the autopilot began the transformation into fighter mode, at the same time it injected an airborne stimulant into the cockpit.  
  
The pilot stirred and wretched black blood into the freefall environment of the cockpit, dark globules of blood drifted about the cramped space, sticking to his sides and latching onto various surfaces, include the vidscreen.  
  
Heero reached into a small bucket attached to the floor beside him and pulled out a large rag. Trying to wipe the blood off from his screen, the rag was already soaked in blood, smearing the burgundy substance all over his screen. Swearing weakly to himself he unbuckled his beaten body and removed an already blood drenched shirt to try and find a clean spot to use to wipe off his screen. While leaning forward trying to clean the vidscreen, Heero winced in pain, a dulling sensation slowly crept up his spine. Fighting the sensation Heero pulled back to sit upright in the pilot's chair breathing harshly. Eventually the freezing sensation seeped into his brain and he lost consciousness, his mind drifting afloat, lost in a numbing sea of ice. 


	4. Tears of the Bloodstone Part IV

'May he go forth on the sunrise boat  
  
May he come to port on the sunset boat May he go among the imperishable stars May he sail on the boat of a million years'  
  
Book of Going Forth by Daylight  
  
"From my mother's sleep I fell into the state. And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life. I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose."  
  
- 'Death of the Ball Turret Gunner' by Randall Jarrell  
  
Tears of the Bloodstone part IV  
  
By: Godshatter  
  
  
  
  
  
Blue night, yawning across an open sky like a giant bowl with tiny crystals of shimmering starlight spread out over the horizons. The air was still warm from the mid day's heat, and frequented by a cooling breeze from places north, while the night seemed to hang suspended across the rolling dunes of the Arab desert. Dorothy Catalonia sat on the front porch of the Winner Mansion, her head resting against a great marble pillar. Behind her a long reflection pool caught the rays of the moonlight and hurled them back against the many pearl colored columns lining its edges: casting aura like reflections. The wind came off the desert and drifted lazily through long strands of wispy blonde, Dorothy tossed her main back and let the wind catch her hair. The breeze meandered through the pillars and skipped over the reflection pool: its tiny winged feet tiptoeing over the glass-like water. The wind now long gone, the cool night air resumed its tranquil state. Dorothy closed her eyes and sighed contently, a half emptied crystal glass of red wine sat alone beside her- its intricately cut surface dancing in the moonbeams. She yawned and stretched her arms, running her hand through her hair she reached into the pockets of her khaki pants for her watch. Glancing down at the gold pocket watch, the one that had been her grandfather's, she noted the time at 10:40. Light footfalls sounded behind her, turning her head she saw that Quatre was making his way along the marble path from the reflection pool. "Is there word from the Halo yet?" Quatre nodded and sat down beside her as another cool rush of air came off from the desert sea, the breeze lapped at his white open shirt and its collar fluttered lazily in the wind. "Apparently Heero is early, Atlas Halo and Strategic Defense both tracked an unidentified mobile suit originating from a probable Lunar orbit." Quatre paused and took a sip of ice water and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "Two frigates were sent to interdict, one of which fired a missile volley. Luckily President Une contacted the ship in time for them to activate the missile self-destruct. We don't think Wing Zero received any damage, but are very worried about Heero's probable condition, he hasn't responded to any attempt at communication." Dorothy frowned and leaned forward on her elbows, "Do we know when he is expected to hit landfall?" "The Halo estimates he will be in earth's atmosphere anytime within the next 25 minutes. I'm sending Rashid along with a small detachment of Maganacs to the coordinates that the Halo projected as an impact site. I want you to go with them. I'm also trying to make arrangements to have a medical staff flown out here." "So you think he's badly injured?" asked Dorothy, standing up as a crew of Maganacs drove up the circular driveway in front of the estate. "I don't know, but if he is I want to make sure he gets treated as quickly as possible." Dorothy nodded and zipped up her jacket, she was glad she had decided to wear longs sleeves, as it was becoming rather cool outside. Walking up to the lead land rover, one of the Maganacs hopped out of the backseat so that he could open Dorothy's door for her. Sliding into the front seat next to Rashid, she turned and waved at Quatre. He waved back and called, "Be careful Dorothy!" as Rashid gunned the motor. She smiled back at his receding figure as the small convoy muscled its way into the rolling ocean of sand. "Miss Dorothy, do you think Heero made it alive?" asked Rashid, shifting gears, causing the heavy vehicle to suddenly lurch forward. "Yes," she said, "I think he is alive." "I'm glad to hear that, I have a feeling that optimism is something we are going to need a great deal of." "What do you mean by that?" "It's just a hunch," he said, "One of those gut instincts." Dorothy nodded and glanced out the window, the desert was streaming by in a blurry wash of starscape topped dunes and waves of sand. Rashid upped the gears and the rover leapt forward, its wheels churning through the arid lake.  
  
The cockpit of Zero was quiet: globules of blood floated amid the pieces of equipment and light debris that had been jolted free during the missile barrage. A partially conscious Heero was sporadically typing on the main console trying to re-orient Wing Zero for atmospheric aerobraking. The effort of piloting the heavy mobile suit into an acceptable trajectory was tiring and Heero's hand could barely move the joystick so that he could pitch Zero's heading down below Earth's ecliptic- if he were to drift too high over the plane the gundam would skip right out of the atmosphere like a stone over a river. "C'mon Zero, help me out here," he muttered, killing the vernier engines, behind him their dull roar died into the soundless vacuum of space. Entering a final string of commands into Zero's computer, Heero leaned back into the pilot seat and wiped a smear of blood out of his eyes. His chest heaved up and down as breathing had gotten much harder: his torso had swollen up around a number of broken ribs. Reaching up behind him he flipped a small red switch, turning on a transponder beacon. Heero computed a reentry burn sequence into the flight computer and allowed himself a few moments of rest while Zero re-oriented itself to face back towards the stars, all the while its inertia accelerating it earthwards. The vernier rockets howled to life, blue fire spewing out of their gaping throats. The verniers poured out their muscles at full tilt until the main fuel reservoir was depleted in an attempt to shed some of Zero's tremendous inertia. Heero, struggling to pilot the machine, fought the steadily increasing feedback against the control sticks as the atmospheric envelope of Earth leapt up around Zero- bathing it in a corona of searing heat as it fell through the sky.  
  
Making their way through the desert, Dorothy and the Maganacs were making headway, closing in on the coordinates given by the Halo at a good speed. "Maganac contingent th- -s Atl- Halo -unintelligible- do -unintelligible- repeat, do you copy?" The static message came in over the reserved military frequency. Dorothy yanked the walkie-talkie off of its cradle on the dashboard. "Atlas Halo, this is Dorothy Catolonia, please repeat." "This is -las Ha-o calling Maganac c-tinget, switch to -unintelligible- 23, repeat, s-tch to emergency band 23." Dorothy reached over to the transistor mounted under the dash and turned the dial to 23. "Atlas Halo, this is Dorothy Catolonia, do you copy?" she spoke into the mouthpiece.  
  
Lazily orbiting high above the Earth in one of the Halo space towers was Ensign Leol. He had been assigned to track the anomalous mobile suit by President Une herself. The Halo had been having a tough time tracking the machine since gundanium had a poor radar signature, luckily the pilot had turned on a transponder beacon- allowing Ensign Leol to more accurately predict the trajectory and eventual impact location of the mobile suit. "Miss Dorothy," the Ensign said into the radio microphone, "I read you loud and clear. I apologize for the interference, there has been quite a lot of unexplained electronic glitches here in the last day or so." "That's quite alright," came the reply. "Do you have any new information on Wing Zero?" Leol scanned his display board, "Yes ma'am I do, we are now projecting Wing Zero to hit approximately two and a half kilometers north of where we originally predicted. Also, our satellites are showing a significant amount of structural loss and damage being caused by the reentry." There was a pause of silence on the other end for a few moments. "Alright," said Dorothy after a minute, "Thank you for informing us." "Yes ma'am," he replied, "Atlas Halo, out." Ensign Savielly Leol shut off the communications link and went back to typing at his console- his fingers flew over the keypad as he resumed work on hacking the command and control line code for the SD network.  
  
"Did you get that?" asked Dorothy, replacing the radio walkie-talkie on its mount. "Yes," said Rashid. "Two and a half kilometers north of the originally estimated crash site." Dorothy nodded and looked back out the window, scanning the sky for a burning red scar. Rashid managed to find a maintenance road and threw the rover into high gear, teari ff down the worn asphalt at a good 120kph. Dust and sand whipped about the windshield while rocks and pebbles buffeted the undercarriage.  
  
* * *  
  
Communiqué: P.R.A.I. - Band Circuit: Los Alamos, Mars / Mobius Halo To: Quatre R. Winner, New Arab Confederation; q-man@winner.inet Subject: Zero Subject Message Body:  
  
Quatre, we need you to ship to us Wing Zero, its condition is irrelevant. ASAP.  
  
Signed: Doctor J. - Research Division 2 Associate: P.R.A.I.  
  
Quatre stood leaning against his desk in the study. The back window was open, letting in the cool night air. He had just gotten off the phone with one of his contacts, he had been assured that a medical staff was on their way from Cairo and would be there within the hour. They were being flown in by one of his private jets already in Egypt. The communiqué had been received a few minutes after Dorothy had left with Rashid. Quatre had read it after talking to his man in Cairo. Quatre sat down in front of his computer and started typing his reply to Dr. J.  
  
Communiqué: N.A.C - Band Circuit: Atlas Halo / Los Alamos Array, Mars To: Doctor J, Phobos Research Associates International; J@prai.inet Subject: Zero Recovery Message Body:  
  
Doctor J, I received your message and will do all that I can to get Wing Zero to you.  
  
put ned: Quatre R. Winner - Mogul: N.A.C.  
  
Quatre finished the email and submitted it to his outbox, a few moments latter a message box appeared and notified him that the message had been successfully encrypted and sent. Leaning back in his chair, Quatre turned his head to look out one of the windows in his study. One of the things he had always loved about living out in the desert was how the clear night skies were always full of stars, and rarely hidden by cloud cover, unlike the unnatural starlight of the colony glow tubes and the smoggy cityscapes of Earth. The antique grandfather clock standing sentry beside the door chimed 11 o'clock. Quatre's brows furrowed as he thought. He knew that Heero was at least an entire hour early, meaning that there was a higher chance of a critical failure during re-entry due to a much higher velocity than previously calculated. Closing his eyes he rested his head in one hand braced against the wooden desk while running his other hand through his hair- he knew there was nothing left that he could do for the moment, the rest was up to Heero.  
  
High up in the atmosphere and falling like a stricken star, Wing Zero was lost amidst a torrent of steadily thickening air and increasingly stronger wind currents. Inside, Heero was tossed about his restraining harnesses, the badgering playing hell with his internal injuries causing him to vomit up more blood. Somewhere in the cockpit a critical warning light was flashing, pulsing red in the gory cockpit- Zero was desperately low on propellant. Outside the chemical rocket motors sputtered and coughed, dying on one final heave. Mobile suit Wing Zero was now in freefall.  
  
The desert was vast and quiet, and there was no wind for the time being. Dorothy and the Maganac contingent churned through the desert in their rovers, leaving a long winding trail in their sandy wake. "Miss Dorothy," said Rashid as the vehicle powered its way through the shifty sands of a dune, "I think I can see Wing Zero." Saying this, Rashid pointed up towards the upper part of the windshield. Dorothy looked up from where she had been starring, glass-eyed, at the dashboard. "Do you see that patch of red in the sky over there?" Dorothy traced the path where he was pointing and peered out the windshield, trying find where he was talking about. "I don't see it," she said. "Its up there, its just a little below the top of the windshield, right about half way between the rearview mirror and the side of the car." Dorothy looked again, and found the light swath of hazy red high above them. "How long do you think we have?" asked Dorothy, still eyeing the patch of sky. "I have no idea," replied Rashid, "We are still some ways off from the site, we will in all likelihood arrive after Heero does. I don't think it matters anyways, we wouldn't want to be right there when he hits, Halo said that his vernier engines and chemical rockets were sputtering quite erratically when he entered the atmosphere, meaning he is all but out of fuel, if not all ready. When he crashes, it's going to be like a train running into a mountain with a thousand tons of high explosives strapped to it." Dorothy grimaced and looked away from the sky, and back out the window.  
  
High above the Maganacs, in the upper reaches of the exosphere, 750 km above the surface of the earth, Heero fell. Unconscious and oblivious to the world around him, he sat, back against the pilot seat, strapped into his gundam; turned man-made meteor he shuddered in the torrential atmosphere as it swelled around Zero. Running on autopilot, the gundam attempted to keep on some sort of course by making small adjustments in its arms and legs so that it could steer itself much like a laser guided bomb- an adjustment of the left knee actuator here, wave the right arm at this angle with this amount of force behind it, a slight change of the wrist here, or maybe a gyration of the torso- all of these movements kept Wing Zero from tumbling completely out of control (really, there was nothing controlled about it, all these movements did was keep Zero from falling so violently that Heero wasn't battered to death). Roused from his unconscious stupor by the shuttering of his mobile suit, Heero's eyes opened and focused on the screen in front of him. One of the forward cameras had managed to remain functional through the atmospheric firestorm and was now displaying an image of the sweeping desert below. There were few clouds below him to hinder his vision, he could see for a thousand miles in every direction. Still too weak to manage the controls, Heero simply sat strapped against his pilot's seat watching the earth flow up to greet him. There were small patches of green sprinkled out about the vast expanse of arid brown and dune-swept shifting beige, along with the occasional vein of blue. The colors were muted by the starlight and swirled together at the edges under the soft glow of a watery pale moon. His eyes began to drift in their sockets, and his vision blurred into empty pitch colored nothingness as reality floated out from him. Sleep claimed his tired and broken body. Reaching an altitude of 12,000 meters, Wing Zero deployed an emergency parachute, the drag line caught and the heavy fabric of the chute billowed out into the wind- it held for a moment or two, then split open right along its axial seem. Though the emergency chute had failed, it still slowed wing Zero considerably. At 8,000 meters all actuators inside the joints extended to their maximum and filled their empty cavities with hydraulic fluid. Now braced for impact, Wing Zero ejected all of its outer armor; as shards of gundanium spilled out wildly into the night sky a short 5 second burst of the chemical rockets from an auxiliary fuel reservoir was the gundam's last ditch effort to shed both mass and downward momentum.  
  
Dorothy thought the sky had caught fire. In front of her, rushing out of the heart of the desert, a pulse wave tore over the loose sands and ripped a hurricane from the throat of the night. Rashid mashed down on the accelerator and their vehicle hurdled into the buffeting blast of wicked air. Still 4 km from the crash site, the small convoy drove mindlessly towards their destination, while in front of them a pillar of flame leapt up form the horizon, and spilled out across the sky bathing the night in smoldering embers that fell like the bloody tears of a weeping goddess. Sand churning under the rough tires of the land rovers, the maganacs sped off at full tilt, their already beaten engines rasping in broken protest. Hitting a large rock hidden under the sand, the rover bucked upwards sharply causing Dorothy to smack her head against the window. Uttering a small curse, she looked at the cracked pane of glass: starlets of fracture lines crisscrossed its ruined plane of clearness, etching a spider web into the side of the door. Dorothy touched a small splotch of red leaking its way down the slick glass. Touching her hand to the side of her head she drew back with more sticky redness on her palm.  
  
The cockpit of Zero was dark and smoke filled; a waterfall of sparks cascaded down from the overhead equipment while most of the internal compartments had been crushed. Lodged just past the foreshore of a small lake, its hulking ruin lay awash in a sea of steam and scorched ozone; the water of the surrounding lakebed had flash-boiled under the inferno of the heavy mobile suit's splashdown. A pool of hydraulic fluid lay forming immediately around the machine; in the split seconds during impact vents in the major joints had all opened, spewing fluid out onto the slagged ground, its release absorbing some of the shock of the impact. The under layer of gundanium armoring had melted and long dribbles of liquid metal had flowed down the armor shell, streaking its ghostly white coloring. Brittle streamlets of molten gundanium had leaked down across the cockpit hatch and dried, fusing the heavy door shut. Inside Heero Yuy sat strapped to the pilot's chair completely oblivious to the surrounding world, his head slumped off at an angle, unconscious.  
  
"Bloody hell, it's fused shut." Abdul was trying to hotwire Zero's hatch to unlock. "It wouldn't matter if I bypass the emergency locks, we still wont be able to get it open." "Rashid, see if we brought one of the hydraulic clamps," said Dorothy, "Abdul, keep trying the security lock." "Yes ma'am," replied Abdul as Rashid handed his cutting torch to one of his compatriots and started walking back to the truck.  
  
Weightlessness: Heero awoke to a sense of movement, and a sudden jolt of pain glared white behind his eyes. He tried to groan, or curse, or yell, but there was something blocking the sounds in his throat. He found his hands to be shackled and chained behind his back, and there was a foul taste of greasy metal filling his mouth. Sucking air in through his nostrils he forced his breathing to slow, and his heart rate to calm. Spinning his body so that he could face the ceiling he saw that there was no roof over the corridor, it simply let out into the open vacuum of space; a distant starfield rotated slowly across the open roof as the superstructure of the space station spun along its axis. There was very little lighting, but ahead of him he could see three spacesuit-clad figures pulling him along the sporadically lit hallway. Though the ceiling was open, there were not clean cut lines of separation or seems, but more like jagged holes blown out into space; the corridor was probably closed from space at one time. Along the walls, their dirty rust colored surfaces seemed to have a dark, murky looking substance coagulating in sticky pools of murderous brown, while vacuum corroded pipes crisscrossed and weaved about the walls like cancerous mechanical arteries. Floating about the corridor were various objects, objects of no particular interest except for the fact that they were very out of place in an open-vacuum corridor- there were a pair of tennis shoes drifting about close to one of the major pipe conduits, a tattered bandana, a man's work shirt- all of these items had various stains of long-dried blood. One of the men pulling Heero down the hallway accidentally nudged a pair of shiny platinum colored sunglasses and sent the object spinning slowly out the roof of the rotating station corridor, their reflective lenses glinting in the dim light of space until they drifted out of sight. As the station rotated, Heero could see a large cluster of lights flaring glitter into the passage from space. These miniature burning stars in the sky were the fusion torches of a one thousand ship strong armada. The diamond blazing drive tubes of the warship flotilla began to fall in on itself, its outer sparkles swirling inward towards the epicenter where a wavering event horizon disk collapsed, spewing light into space and melting the starfield into a wash of blankness. The event horizon flickered and exploded outwards faster than realization could compile inside Heero's skull.  
  
Blinking tears away from his eyes, Heero tried to lift his hand to shield his eyes from the blinding 250,000-candle floodlight that spilled into the cramped interior of Wing Zero. "Heero? Heero, are you all right? Answer me Heero!" Heero coughed and groaned. Fiddling with his restraining harness he tried to unlatch himself so that he could stand up. Rising slowly to his feet, blood began to pour down his side and leak from a number of lacerations, bruises and various other injuries. Dorothy stepped through the ruined hatch and reached over to help steady the wounded pilot on his feet. "Jesus, Heero," was all she could say, his warm blood seeping down her own arms and staining her clothing as she tried to support his weight, helping him walk out of the wreckage of Zero. "Wait," he breathed into her ear just as they were making their way to the truck, "I have to get something." Letting go of Dorothy, Heero turned and stumbled back towards his mobile suit. "There is something that I need to get to Dr. J." Staggering back in the direction of the cockpit, Heero miss-stepped and lurched forward, collapsing onto the ground, his chest heaved up and down as he madly sucked air into his lungs. "Heero!" Dorothy sprinted back to her wounded friend. "Heero, what has gotten into you, we need to get you back to Quatre's so we can patch you up. What is it you need, we'll have Rashid get it for you." Heero regained his feet and reached out to steady himself on Dorothy's shoulder, "No, I'll get it," he managed to say. Staggering away from Dorothy, Heero pitched forward again, but she managed to grab him by his side and throw her arms around his waist, keeping him from falling. "You really are a stubborn ass, you know that Heero?" "Hn" "Grrr, Heero you're not a fucking machine!" Heero's hair was beginning to get blood soaked and was matted to his forehead, hanging down past his eyes, blocking his vision. Dorothy reached over and pulled his hair back to the side of his head and tucked some of it behind his ears, she was about to say something when she caught sight of the emotion in Heero's eyes. She had never seen anything beyond their cold armor of glacial blue. Heero shook his head and allowed his hair to fall back into his eyes, veiling the smoldering embers that kindled quietly inside of him.  
  
"I can manage," he said, coughing for a moment. "I have to get it myself." "What is it that is so important? Why can't Rashid get it for you?" asked Dorothy. Heero didn't respond, he just continued to make his way back to the wrecked mobile suit. Reaching the cockpit, Heero steadied himself on one of the handles just inside the hatch and reached up over the pilot's seat. With a strain and a loud grunt he managed to rip a large black case from its bindings. "This," he said, "Is what is so important." Heero handed the weighty container to Abdul, who had come up with Dorothy to assist him, and began to shuffle back down the makeshift ramp that lead back down to the ground from the hatch. Abdul looked down at the heavy box Heero had handed him, down the ramp at the wounded pilot, and finally over to Dorothy, who just shook her head and trotted up next to Heero. Heero was slowly walking towards the rover, his head rolling about his neck like a broken accordion. Dorothy started to say something but stopped when Heero uttered a queer sound and reached up to grab his face as if he had been shot. He tried to say something but all that came out were gurgled words and sickly looking blood. Heero's hands dropped to his sides, he stood like that for a few moments until his eyes rolled back into his head and he slumped forward, falling headlong into the desert sand. Rashid and Abdul rushed over to pick up the stricken pilot. Rashid picked him up and carried him over to the lead rover. Dorothy still stood beside the place where Heero had fallen, a large stain blotting out the ground like a lingering shadow under the glowing moonbeams.  
  
* * *  
  
Mars: the blood filled god of war- its red ironoxide surface certainly made it look its namesake. From the viewport on the P.R.A.I. orbital station Duo could see some of the city lights of the Martian capital, Boralis, their soft white glow shining dimly through the thin atmosphere of the shadowed nightside.  
  
Ever since the Space War of A.C. 195 the Mars Terraforming project has been expanding at an exponential rate. Originally started in B.C.E. (Before Colony Era) 2130 it was more of a pet project of the U.A.C. rather than a full-blown operation. The project never got past the basic development of the planet. In its first few years the Union Aerospace Corporation constructed 27 some odd atmosphere generation stations around the equator and positioned 173 microwave satellites around the polar-regions. These microwave satellites used solar arrays to collect light and heat energy from the sun and direct it towards the poles to melt the ice in order to free water and various other trace minerals and gases. Seven years latter the project was abandoned for the Colony Project in 2140. In A.C. 185 the project was re-opened and in A.C. 190 it began allowing colonists from the general community, though colonization was extremely slow. However, after the war seemed to spark an interest in the general public and within 10 years from the initial opening in A.C. 185 the project had grown from 550 colonists under 2 pressure domes, to over 25 million people in 5 cities under an open Martian sky (though the atmosphere was only 70% Earth standard- similar to thin mountain air). However, the last 4 months had seen very little traffic, only a thousand colonists per month, only enough to fill a half dozen full starflights. Luckily the P.R.A.I. station wasn't a normal receiving platform for new colonists so the facility was somewhat more cheery than the colonization platforms orbiting the planet. Due to a fall in colonization, the Board of Directors for the planet had been forced to take cutbacks. The P.R.A.I. orbital gantries were the largest orbital stations around Mars, each spanning well over 2 kilometers in length. If one were to become unstable and impact the planet the result would be incredibly disastrous, so to provide as much warning and reaction time as possible in case of such an event, all seven of these station's held a geosynchronous orbit of at least 25,000 kilometers.  
  
Duo's pager went off. "What the-," he had forgotten he had left it on during the flight. Stepping back from the binoculars fixed against one of the thick glass-polymer windows, Duo reached into his pocket and fished out his pager. "Who's calling, Duo?" asked Releena. "I dunno," he replied, making his way towards a public phone, "It just flashed a number, no message." Releena shrugged and resumed packing her book into her carryon suitcase. Duo managed to find a public phone that wasn't in use. Sliding into the booth he closed the door behind him. Dumping in the correct change he dialed the number recorded on his pager. The earpiece registered an electronic ringing while the screen in front of him flashed CONTACTING. After a few moments the other side picked up and the ever-serious mug of Dr. J materialized on the screen. "Well, well Duo, it seems that you made it on time and in one piece." "Heyas doc, so you're the one who paged me huh?" "Actually," said Dr. J, "It was my assistant Nadia, but yes, I wanted you to contact me. It seems that my- er, 'corporation' is conducting some onsite tests at the moment and will continue for an indeterminate amount of time. I want you and the rest to go on ahead to the surface, I'll have Nadia come and pick your group up. She will be assigned a private shuttle to take you up to the station." Duo scratched the back of his head and clacked his tongue against his teeth, "Sure doc, you have any idea when we might be expecting Ms. Nadia?" "Sorry Duo, not a clue." Duo nodded and just as he was about to hang up Dr. J remembered, "Oh wait, Duo, here, I'm faxing this to your payphone, it's a receipt for the Stanford Court Plaza, I have 2 rooms reserved for a couple of days. It's in the market district of Boralis." "Gotcha." "I'll see you in a couple of days, Duo." The transmission was terminated and Duo retrieved the faxed receipt from the dispenser below the screen. "The Stanza Court Plaza," Duo said to himself, "Sounds pretty classy." Stepping out of the phone booth he walked back to his friends.  
  
"So who was it?" asked Hilde. "Dr. J," replied Duo, "He gave me a reservation for some hotel on Boralis."  
  
"Well, at least that solves that problem," said Releena, yawning slightly. "I can get some more sleep, that flight felt like it took a week, not a day and a half." The group picked up their carryon luggage and meandered out into the main terminal. "I wonder where baggage claim is," asked Wade, "I'm kinda anxious to get down on the planet and rest up a bit, this interplanetary travel isn't so great for us older folks." Duo shot Wade a strange glance and shook his head. After they had been walking for a while, the group found a number of benches lined up together overlooking one of the terminals below. While the others were sitting down, Duo noticed a map screen on the far wall. "I'll be right back," he said, "I'm going to find out where the hell our gear is." Dr. Wade shrugged and leaned back on the bench and stretched his legs out, closing his eyes he folded both of his arms behind his head and yawned. "Dr. Wade?" asked Releena, stifling her own urge to yawn after the older scientist, "Have you ever been to Mars?" "Not for a long, long time," he replied, eyes still closed. "I was thinking on the flight here, I think I'm beginning to figure out what it is we might be doing." "And what might that be?" queried Duo, returning from the map. "Well," said Wade, "It's kind of hard to explain, but I think it might have something to do with some of my earlier research at one of the Mars stations." "I'm sure Dr. Wade will fill us in once we get to the hotel," for most of the trip Hilde had been very quiet, she had spent the duration of it leaned up against Duo's arm either listening to music and staring out the window or sleeping. Duo nodded, "I found out where we can get our stuff, there was a problem with one of the luggage conveyers, I don't know the specifics, the map computer didn't say anything else about it." The group stood up and gathered their carryon bags and followed Duo out of the terminal towards the luggage claim area. Luckily it only took a couple of minutes and a half-dozen rotations of the large carousel to bring out everyone luggage. Fortunately finding a shuttle down to Boralis wasn't quite as tricky as getting their luggage. Locating a flight to Boralis, the group made their way along one of the outer corridors of the station. The long arching clear roof of the corridor offered a superb view of the lazily rotating planet's night side below. The motorized handholds on the sides of the corridor sped the group off towards the shuttle boarding area, giving off a soft whir as the chain mounted grips hummed along towards either end of the station.  
  
* * *  
  
"What do the doctors say?" "They think he is going to make it, I haven't been in to see him though, and they aren't really talking much." Quatre and Dorothy sat alone in Quatre's living room. Dawn had long since broken, and Heero had been in surgery for the last 13 hours. Quatre had insisted on being in the operating room with his unconscious friend, but after being reassured that the doctors would do everything in their power to save the brutally wounded pilot, he was politely asked to excuse himself from the room (though secretly he was relieved that they had asked him to leave as he hated the sight of blood.) Evening was beginning to fall, and just as the red glimmer of waning daylight was filtering through the Egyptian cotton of the delicate curtains Dorothy was awakened by a gentle nudge on her shoulder. Quatre had stepped out, having to tend to his family's empire leaving her alone in the large room attached to the small medical facility that he had in residence. "Ms. Catalonia," said a man in a bloodstained lab coat, "Ms. Catalonia, would you please wake up." Dorothy blinked the sleep out of her eyes and looked about the room. Dusk had arrived and had splashed the room in a soft glow of orange. "Is Heero going to live?" she asked the doctor. The man nodded and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, "That person in there is quite the creation, I cannot understand why he is not dead." "Creation?" repeated Dorothy, her voice cracking ever so slightly, the remnants of sleep still circulating in her system. "How do you mean?" Shaking his head the doctor motioned for her to follow him into the operating room, "This is something you will have to see for yourself." The room had originally been a spare study attached to a few extra bedrooms that Quatre had converted into a small medical facility during the Eve Wars. Heero lay sleeping in a bed next to a large intricately cut glass window, his breath coming in shallow sighs. Leading Dorothy over to a brightly lit wall, he hung a few X-ray photographs up to examine, saying: "During his operation we had to repair a large amount of damage to his muscular system, but surprisingly there was nowhere near as much damage to his skeletal mass as we had expected. Of course there was some damage, 3 broken ribs, a telescoped spinal column, dislocated shoulder and various others fractures. But what really surprised us was the condition of his major bones, not only were none of them damaged, but they also gave a very peculiar X-ray image, as you can see here." Pointing to one of the photographs he continued, "The bones here give back a normal X-ray reflection, however, when we moved down to X-ray his major leg bones we found a much more solid image. The bones are dense, like a metal or some sort of indo-steel. We don't know what this means exactly, but 8 of his major bones have been replaced by this material. It appears to be far lighter than bone as well." "Interesting," was all Dorothy could say, she honestly had no idea what to make of this. "How is his condition at the moment?" she asked, "I know you said he was going to live, but how long will his recovery take." A nurse came in and changed one of Heero's IV bags and replaced a number of his bandages. "I don't know, physically his body will recover itself very quickly. During the operation we noticed that in his non-enhanced bones there was already a state of regeneration and repair that is not normally seen for two, even three weeks. Same goes for the damage to his internal organs. His body will be healed to 90% functionality within a matter of weeks. Anyone else in his condition would have died for certain." "What about his mental state?" asked Dorothy, a hint of apprehension lacing her voice. "To be honest," he said, "I never did receive much formal training on the intricate workings of the human brain and psychology. What I can cell you based on the CAT scans we have taken, and the amount of injuries sustained by the body, is that his mind has been severely traumatized. I do not know what happened to him, all I can say is that it might be a very long time until his conscious mind heals." Dorothy made her way over to the side of Heero's bed and leaned against the wall, staring down at the unconscious pilot. His hair had grown considerably and hung limp, sprawled about his head. "What are your recommendations?" she asked quietly. Shaking his head the doctor replied, "There really isn't anything you can do. I suppose some sort of stimulus might help bring him back to reality, but that is probably a long shot" "Stimulus?" "Yes, patients who are in a coma like state are known to be somewhat aware of their surroundings, recognize familiar voices, understand conversations. That sort of thing." The doctor removed his lab coat and hung it on a peg near the door, turning to Dorothy he spoke on his way out, "Sometimes they respond to physical touch as well." The doctor stepped out and the same young nurse walked briskly into the room, " 'Scuse me m'am," she said, "Would you mind stepping out? I need to give him a bath, he is dreadfully dirty." Dorothy nodded and left Heero in the care of the nurse. Night had filled the desert while a cool breeze crept up on the dunes.  
  
* * *  
  
Though the terreforming itself had taken a number of years, the true colonization aspect of the Mars Project had taken off with an energy not even the original developers would have imagined. Because of its lower gravity, on Mars buildings were constructed both rapidly and efficiently (and with no lack of buyers to fill building space.) Skyscrapers leapt to unheard of heights, some towered over a kilometer high. Colonization powered by a massive population both on Earth and in the space colonies, and fueled by corporate expansiveness and a desire for exploration, demanded large cities and new construction techniques. New materials were tested and industry started on Mars, (though for the time being a large portion of the Martion industry was energy corporations such as NovaCorp, which owned 90% of the atmospheric generation plants).  
  
Nights on Mars were a sky watcher's dream come true. The thinner atmosphere and severe lack of moisture in the air allowed considerably more starlight to reach the ground. Hilde sat at the windowsill of the room that she and Releena were sharing, starring up into the sky waiting for nothing in particular to happen. Releena, Duo, and Wade had already gone to bed- the lengthy shuttle flight from the moon had taken its toll. One never could sleep too well on a shuttle, no legroom. High above her, the lights of the orbital stations glimmered; they drifted lazily along a black pond speckled with pinholes of light. Opening the window, she eased her legs over the edge and leaned out into the night. Even though she was 4 stories up, she didn't worry too much, the low gravity on Mars was only 70% Earth standard, (though it had been the cause for great concern in the early days of colonization/terraforming). Breathing deeply, the air was dry but cool, and it felt good in her lungs after the processed air of the shuttle. In front of her gleamed the skyline of Boralis, its trademark towers stretching high into the night sky. During the day, the glass embossed structures shone with a light that seemed to radiate outward from them, standing tall their outlines etched against a pale blue sky. The market district where the hotel was located was 7 kilometers from the city's spaceport, surrounding the hotel were shops and malls of all descriptions. For the most part it consisted of a grid of city blocks spanning several kilometers in all directions. The shops were made of a synthetic polymer designed to be easily molded and to look like stone, giving the place a slightly Italian/Romanesque look to it. The shops were clean, and the people were cheery. The department of colonization made sure every person had a job who wanted one. Crime was virtually nonexistent . The city lights were bright and soothing against the midnight sky. Closing her eyes, Hilde leaned her head against the windowsill and breathed contently. A slight breeze snuck into the room and swished the white embroidered curtains around behind her, whispering into her ears. Yawning, Hilde eased her legs in from outside and closed the window. Standing up she leaned forward and touched her forehead to the glass pane, smiling she looked out at the sleeping city. Returning to bed, she slipped quietly under her sheets and sank into dreams.  
  
* * *  
  
On board the Lancet class destroyer, Hood, Chang Wufei's alarm went off at 0500 hours. Grumbling to himself he reached over and switched[?ú the alarm. Sitting up in bed, he looked over at his roommate, Lt. Ives, who was still sleeping soundly. Yawning, Wufei stretched and got out of bed, padding in his socks over to the viewport where Jupiter's dayside was rising. Being assigned as a resident mobile suit pilot for the defense of the Jovian O'Neil Combine (O'Neil Chemicals merged with the newly formed Jovian Aerospace during the pioneering days of H3 mining on Jupiter; the company currently held a monopoly on H3 exportation to the Earth and her umbrella of colony clusters), he had found that he always enjoyed the sight. Though there was a strong military presence in the Jupiter Orbital Array, (often simply referred to as JOVE), there were very few mobile suits. All of mobile suit production had been reduced to a mere shadow of its former self in light or recent years. Modern space fighters were far faster than mobile suits (though nowhere near as maneuverable) and were a fraction of the cost. Because H3 mining was absolutely vital to interplanetary travel/trade, the Earth Federation, along with the colonies, constructed a large fleet for its defense. Though this fleet was of substantial firepower it didn't hold a candle to the fleets of previous space wars. The fleet was lead by the command carrier, Eisenmann (Iron Man). The Lancet class of destroyers was a novelty to the fleet. They were the smallest of all destroyers (essentially a destroyer powerplant/drive combination fused with an enlarged frigate body, giving tremendous energy reserves to the overpowered vessel). Because the powerplant output of a destroyer exceeds the energy consumption of a frigate by more than 3 times, the designers of the Lancet decided to put this overflow to use. Running almost the entire length of the ships spine was an ion acceleration ladder spindled into a double helix formation with vented plasma ducts crisscrossing the helix network every 5 meters. The idea was to draw ions from the plasma being dumped into the fusion torch and to accelerate them down the ladder. Once the ion stream passed over the plasma ducts that crossed the network in the form of large pipes, each with a bulging center with large vents gauged into it, the ion stream would draw plasma mass from the vent ducts and continue onward towards the bow of the ship where it would be projected into space by a specially fitted nozzle. The nozzle could be adjusted to generate a highly concentrated beam of supercharged ionic mass, or to disperse the energy as radiation in a conical region to act as an ECM (electronic counter measure), thus jamming most forms of telecommunication and sensor apparatus. Because the main weapon's acceleration ladder took up a large portion of the ship, the normal frigate's compliment of 4 mobile suits and 2 strike craft (or 1 bomber) was reduced to just 3 mobile suits and a reconnaissance vehicle (though her missile bays were increased to nearly a full destroyer's loadout). Even with the new power requirements of the PPC (particle projection cannon), the ships power needs were still far under the production capacity of the powerplant. Several beam cannons were added to the frigate's compliment of 3 bow-mounted batteries and a number of turrets in the rear (mostly providing anti-mobile suit protection). The resulting vessel was a powerful mix of anti-warship capabilities as well as considerable anti- mechanized defense, both of these increased to a standoff range by her compliment of cruise missiles and rockets, (the standard frigate carried only anti-mobile suit rockets and a handful of Polaris anti-warship torpedoes in addition to her beam cannons). Wufei turned away from the viewport and glared at his sleeping roommate. He reached down and picked up the pillow off of his bed and tossed it onto the head of the sleeping Lt., "Wake up," was all he said to the startled pilot. "Oi, can't a guy get any sleep around here?" grumbled Ives, "We're supposed to be on leave anyhow, we still have an hour." Wufei twisted his glare to show his displeasure. What "leave" was considered out in the Jovian Array, was 2 weeks repair in dry dock with one of the giant mooring facilities for maintenance. Other than the H3 miners and their families, there were precious few civilians out beyond the asteroid belt. "Right, right.." Said Ives, trailing off. Wufei snorted and gathered his clothes up and left for a shower. Even though he was only a command master chief (petty officer, equivalent to command sergeant major, 2nd highest non-commissioned rank) he had refused countless promotions and wished to remain as a non-com. He was allowed to use the officer's shower because of his pilot status. Stifling another yawn, he turned on the hot water and steam soon filled the small communal shower room. Standing under the stream of hot water, its heat flowing down his body, Wufei breathed in deep and slow, until his vision blurred ever so slightly. Resuming his shower he produced a small bottle of shampoo and began to lather up his hair. Behind him, the door to the shower opened and in came Lt. Ives followed by Lt. Commander Romanova. Lt. Com. Iria Romanova came from a long military lineage, her great grandfather had been killed in the space war of A.C. 095, and her grandfather had been a Major in the space war of A.C. 137. Her father was currently an Admiral in command of the 3rd Fleet defending the moon and Tranquility Halo. Ives walked over to one of the small storage lockers and opened the door, hanging his towel over his shoulder he stripped and placed his clothes inside. Whistling to himself he made his way over to the showerhead next to Wufei and turned it on. Water sputtered out of the cold metal pipes and pooled at his feet, seeping slowly into the drain in the side of the wall. "You know," he said, "You're the worst alarm clock I've ever had." Wufei snorted and rinsed his hair. "You two are always at it." Ives peered over Wufei's shoulder and glared at Lt. Com. Romanova, who had taken the showerhead on the other side of Wufei. She grinned at him and he rolled his eyes, water soaked into her auburn hair. Wufei finished his shower and wrapped a towel around his waist. He walked over to one of the water faucets and began to fill the washbasin with hot water so that he could shave. He truly hated shaving, even though he only had to do it a few days out of the week out of necessity, he forced himself to go through the actions every day so as not to become slack and to keep up a consistent appearance. The crew slept, showered and exercised in the artificial gravity induced by the counter rotating wheels of the living quarters. The rest of the ship was null-G. The shower drains were connected to the side of the wall where it joined with the floor (as opposed to beneath your feet) in order to use this rotation-induced gravity to siphon down the water to be recycled into the system. Following his shower, Wufei always spent time in the ships small gymnasium (this exercise was absolutely crucial in a null-G environment, muscles will begin to atrophy after only a few days of neglect), for the most part he used free weights and resistance based mechanisms and stayed away from the electronic machines. Ives was not only his wingman, but was one of the few people he tolerated enough on the ship to befriend to some degree. They always worked out together. Though often times Lt. Com. Romanova would be present in the gym, she always conducted her exercises alone and in total silence, not even mouthing a grunt or a groan. Ives strolled into the room and began setting up one of the resistance machines so that he could work his upper back and shoulder muscles. Wufei pulled down a set of parallel bars from one of the wall dollies and began to stretch his arms and legs on them before lifting himself up by his arms and performing a number of exaggerated gymnast-like maneuvers (exaggerated by the lower gravity). Ives smirked at him and got to work with his resistance machine, a number of pulleys attached to the wall with wires running through them, attached to the wires were 2 large paddles. The user would fasten each hand to a paddle by a series of straps, and then sit with his legs out in front of him and secure his legs to the bench by another series of straps. The user would then moves his arms in a swimming-like motion. The resistance of the wire/pulley combination is what the machine was based on. While it was very difficult to "beef up" in null gravity (not that this is a bad thing, you don't want a lot of body mass to hinder your movements) it is easy to retain your already existing muscle mass and to strengthen it to some degree. After spending 20 minutes or so in the gymnasium Wufei would return to their room and change into his pit overalls and make his way to the hanger bay where he served as head mobile suit technician along with his pilot's role. Though he had very little in common with the other gundam pilots, one interest that he and Heero both shared was an uncommon knack for the understanding of machines and a love of tinkering. He spent many hours up to his elbows in grease, machine oil, and the oversized bulk of mobile suit parts. Often times Ives would lend a hand if there was something that absolutely required two people, but otherwise Wufei was the only full time mobile suit technician. The reconnaissance spaceplane was left in the hands of its pilot, Lt. Com. Romanova. In spite of his two roles onboard the ship, Wufei rarely minded the extra work, as patrol flights were only once or twice a day and weren't terribly long. The result was not much wear and tear on the machines and he got to toy around with them, both in the cockpit and in the hanger bay. One of the things he had been able to do once they had docked for maintenance was to load up on more spare parts for their mobile suits. The right elbow's actuator and gimbals on his Leo II needed to be completely replaced. Ives' mobile suit needed a total powerplant overhaul and for its mainframe to be reformatted and debugged. While he was trying to machine a new bearing for one of the various gimbals, Lt. Ives entered the hanger followed by a young ensign of about 25 and redheaded female who bore the 3 downward stripes under double stars of a master chief petty officer. "Hey, Wufei!" Ives had to shout over the noise of the lathe, eventually he and the ensign made their way up behind him and he tapped on Wufei's shoulder. Wufei turned around and regarded Ives for a moment or two and then switched his gaze over to the new officer. He turned back to the machine and turned off the power. "Wufei," said Ives, "I'd like you to meet our new mobile suit pilot, Ensign Freeman, he's on loan to us from the Isolder base in Siberia." The ensign reached out to shake Wufei's hand. Wufei frowned and pulled the heavy leather gauntlet off of his right hand and silently clasped Freeman's hand in his own. After a moment Freeman thought that the petty officer was staring over his shoulder so he turned on his heels and saw that the female chief had remained where the two had paused at the hatchway of the hanger. Ives noticed this a few seconds after Freeman and motioned for the woman to come over to them. While she was making her way over to where the three men were standing, Wufei turned to Freeman and asked quietly, "Sir, is this you're first assignment out of the academy?" Freeman blinked and seemed to not have heard him before he remembered the single gold bar on his shoulder setting him apart as an officer. He grinned sheepishly at having been called "Sir" by this imposing young petty officer. "Yes," he finally replied, "This will be my first assignment. Will this be a problem?" Wufei was about to reply but before he could the female petty officer strode up beside Ives and smiled weakly at the three men, feeling a little out of place. Ives introduced her as Master Chief Petty Officer (fleet) Sarah Bowman. She shook hands with Ensign Freeman and Wufei, though his apparent mood seemed to have soured somewhat. "Wufei," began Ives, "Is the Hood's 3rd resident mobile suit pilot. He may not be an officer but he is a damn good pilot, so don't let his rank fool you." "If he is a pilot why is he machining a new bearing? Isn't that a mechanic's job?" Wufei glared at the new ensign but before he could open his mouth Ives cut in. "He's a pilot, but he is also our chief mechanic as well. He's an ex-gundam pilot so we tend to trust his judgment when it comes to the machines." At the mentioning of the gundam, both Petty Officer Bowman and Ensign Freeman's eyebrows shot up. "Gundam?" they said in tandem. Wufei blushed ever so slightly and returned to his lathe. The machine began to whirr and a small trickle of water sputtered out from an overhead nozzle and encapsulated the sphere in the center of the machine. The bearing was about the size of a fist and shone with the noncolor of quicksilver as water slid over its surface. Ives turned back to his new crewmates and smirked to himself. "I guess this concludes our tour of the hanger deck. I'm sure you two will be spending enough time in here so lets continue on down to D deck.." "Wufei lost the tail end of their conversation as the trio left the hanger deck. To him it made no difference who he worked with and, to some extent, who he flew with. The new ensign looked competent enough, if not a little shy, but he had no idea what to think of his new assistant. She was pretty enough, he had always been attracted to red-heads. The smallest sliver of a smile slipped across his lips as he remembered the deep green of her eyes, they reminded him of someone. Outside Wufei was harder than gundanium, possibly even more armored than Heero, but inside he was a vast sea of warmth.  
  
* * *  
  
Duo's thoughts were blanketed in sleep. They ebbed and flowed in a quiet tumult of nothingness and eddied into small pools of occasional awareness. Then a stone was hurled into the middle of it. "Duo!" Hilde landed right on top of Duo as he lay sleeping. The pilot's eyes popped open and dilated to about 2 and a half times their normal size. A small yelp escaped from him and he bolted up in bed, almost smacking foreheads with the energetic German girl. Regaining his senses somewhat Duo stifled a yawn and looked down at the dark-headed pixie who had entangled him in her arms and was drowning him in kisses. "Oi." he said, rubbing the back of his head and trying to untangle the mass of hair that would eventually become his trademark braid. "It's hard to be mad at someone who misses you when you're sleeping." Daylight was peeping into the room through slits in the drawn curtains. Hilde kissed Duo quickly on the mouth and got up to open the curtains. "You need to get up honey, Releena and I are going to go out in a bit to see her brother and Noin." Duo sat up and rubbed his face in his hands and yawned. Hilde left him to get dressed. He tossed the covers off of him and stood up. Stretching, he glanced out the window to the newly wakened city. It was a new day and he had no idea what he was gonna do. "Hey, Wade, you know of anything interesting to do on Mars?" Wade mumbled something incoherent and rolled over in bed, drawing more of his blanket over the top of his head, the end of his gray pony tail was dangling just over the side of the bed. Duo snorted and walked over to his suitcase where he retrieved his shaving kit and a pair of boxers.  
  
Wade opened his eyes and blinked. He heard water running in the bathroom and figured that Duo was taking a shower. He got up and walked over to the sliding door of their balcony, a slight hint of pain would creep into his knees every now and again. He unlatched the door slid it open letting in a warm breeze of dry air. It had been a long time since he visited Mars, or any of the PRAI facilities, or even been off the Earth.  
  
Duo stepped out of the shower and dried himself off, being extra careful not to pull out any of his hair or tangle it anymore than it already was. Putting on a pair of clean cutoff jeans and a tan colored undershirt he opened the bathroom door, hair in hand, and stepped out ioughthe hotel room. He paused at the full body mirror hanging on the wall across from the bathroom door and brushed the long drapes of chestnut colored hair. Once he had gotten most of the tangles out he went over to the door that joined his room to the girls' room and knocked a few times. "You in there Hilde?" after a few seconds of quiet he rapped on the wooden door again, "Releena, is Hilde in there?" again, no answer. Often times Hilde would volunteer to assist Duo in braiding his hair. Though he was perfectly capable of accomplishing this on his own, he did not hesitate to call on her whenever he got the chance. Duo chewed on his lower lip for a moment and then sidestepped away from the door and plopped himself down on his bed, facing out the large glass sliding door of the balcony. Fiddling with the mass of hair behind his head, Duo adroitly formed a neat braid. When he was finished he let it hang limp down his back. Duo yawned for the Nth time that morning and walked out onto the balcony. The street below was coming alive with the bustle of life and the city was slowly waking up from the sedative Martian night. Smirking to himself Duo sat down on one of the white plastic chairs and pulled up a footstool. He propped his legs up and leaned back against the wall of his hotel room, looking out over Boralis. The city wasn't exactly massive but it did possess a number of peculiarities. The city of Boralis was built in one of the larger craters that made up a significant portion of the planets surface. The city was designed in a tiered fashion so that center districts of the city rose up, level by level, out of the bloody desert. Walkways and elevated highways jutted out in all directions to connect the superstructure of the central complex to its myriad of shopping districts, industrial sites and the elevated starpart that rested just at edge of the crater's eastern wall so that newcomers could look out over the city with relative ease. Hands behind his head, Duo glanced up at the hazy blue sky and wondered what there was to do now that Wade had slipped off and the girls had gone to visit Releena's brother and Lucretzia. After 15 minutes of silence Duo stood up and went inside to put on his boots. After he laced up the thick black leather combat boots he looked at himself in the mirror and chuckled at his appearance. On his way out the door he grabbed his pistol and shoulder holster and put a spare magazine in his left pocket. Though the holster slung under his left armpit was clearly visible he put on his Preventers' jacket and figured no one would pay much attention to the fact that he was armed. Even though Mars, for the most part, was a quaint little settlement compared to Earth, he has never much bothered to break his old habits of going everywhere armed (it was a habit that had saved his hide on more than one occasion). After closing the hotel room behind him, he put on a black baseball cap with the designation numbers for the ship he had last served on, FCS- 117, above the designation numbers was the silhouette of an old dreadnaught class battleship to indicate that she had been a ship of the line. Twisting the hat around so that the bill was angled behind his head and was pushed down on the back of his neck over his bread, he set off down the hall and stopped in front of the elevators. The doors chimed open and he stepped inside. The middle-aged couple already occupying the elevator car asked him if he was going to go to the lobby. Upon his reply the man pressed the "Ground" button and the lift shuttled its way down the shaft. On his way out of the lobby, as he was passing through the automatic sliding doors leading out to the street, Duo's cell rang. He pulled it out of his coat pocket and flipped open the receiver. The image on the screen flashed to life and the face of Dr. J's assistant, Nadia, sparked into view. "Hello Colonel," said the petite brunette woman, "I called to let you know that you need to have your gear ready to go by 7:30 AM tomorrow. I'm arranging to have someone pick you and your group up from the hotel to meet me at the spaceport by 8:00." "I see," replied Duo. Nadia smiled and just before she closed the link off Duo cut in, "Er, Ms. Nadia, I have a question for you." "Yes?" "Might you have any idea what it is that the good doctor wants to see me and the others about?" "No, Duo, I don't have the slightest idea. I'm sorry I couldn't help you." "Its alright," he said to her in turn. "Thanks for the heads up." Duo shut down the transmission and placed the phone back into his pocket. He continued down the sidewalk, peering into the occasional shop or restaurant. His stomach rumbled and he decided to grab a quick breakfast. The sun hang as a fulminating ball of white magnesium fire in the sky, its burning girth hovered in the sky at about a quarter to 10. The atmosphere on Mars was a good bit thinner than Earth, but still thick enough to allow for enough photon scatters to create a pale blue sky. The sun was also a bit brighter, if not a bit smaller. While eating a breakfast of Belgium waffles and eggs in a small café called the Planet Blue, Duo reached back into his jacket and produced the cell again. He quickly punched in the number for the phone directory and summoned the number for the no. 2 PRAI orbital array and supplied Dr. J's extension number when electronically prompted. The phone rang a handful of times before his voice messaging came on. Duo hung up instead of leaving a message. He paid and left a generous tip before wondering back out into the early Martian day.  
  
At about the same time Duo was ordering his breakfast, Heero lay sprawled out under an outside pavilion on Quatre's estate. His bedroom upstairs opened up onto a large observation deck in the back of the mansion, a number of other rooms on the same floor also had sliding doors that lead onto the large marble shaded patio. There was a small fountain in the middle, right under a large domed skylight. Dorothy had gotten into the habit of wheeling Heero (still unconscious and bed ridden) out under the skylight to sit by the fountain. She hoped that the continuous sound of the flowing fount would stir the pilot out of his stupor. She would sit on the ledge of the water art (a large alabaster sphere with small pricks of clear silicone crystals dotting the entire surface of the sculpture, on the top of the artwork was an opening for water to pour out of and flow over the face of the sphere) and read a book. Next to her she would have Heero (still in his bed of course). This particular piece of water art was one of her favorites, if the moon was right, or the stars were bright, the light they shone in the sky would filter through the skylight above the fountain and the silicone crystals would echo the starlight and glitter under the organic ripple of water creating a mosaic of light and shadow on the roof of the patio. Dorothy sat next to Heero, reading a book of haiku's aloud:  
  
warm fireflies float amid the midnight showers: blaze and drop, then gone.  
  
iron cinders of stars cool in expanding darkness: too late for regrets  
  
dragon in the dark, your eyes move across the stars, your breath warms the moon.  
  
Next to Dorothy, Heero slept, his chest would rise and fall with small breaths. He never moved or made a sound other than the sigh of his breathing. Dorothy put the book in her lap and reached over to stroke the side of Heero's check and run her hand through his mess of hair. She whispered something in his ear and walked back inside to get another book.  
  
Heero was being dragged through the end of the airless passageway and was roughly hauled through a large airlock door, the back of his helmet smacked into the rusted bulkhead of the far wall. One of the suited figured punched in a series of numbers on a keypad next to the airlock door and the mechanism cycled shut, musty air rushed into the chamber and filled it with atmosphere. The inner door cycled open and the 4 of them shuffled passed the door. Heero had had his helmet removed by one of the men and was now being led down another hallway, this one looked to be in an even worse state of decay (minus being exposed to vacuum of course). By the time they reached what felt to be the completely opposite end of the station the leather strap on the back of Heero's head was beginning to throb. The thick strap was attached to a large metal gear that was fastened against his front jaw, propping his mouth open. The gear tasted foul and had a pungent greasy residue all around it. His hands remained shackled behind his back and a thick metal rod ran up the length of his back that was attached to the belt around his head, and the binds on his arms so that if he were to struggle to get his hands free, the movement would pull on the gear in his mouth and possibly dislocate his jaw. It also provided a solid means for his captors to grab him in null-g. Finally they entered a large room that was completely dark except a small beam of light that filtered in through a large skylight in the roof. In the center of the lighted region was a bed with more straps. Heero was manhandled into reclining on the bed. His arms, hands, legs and ankles were all fastened securely to the bed. Above him he saw the system's red giant star. Every 27 minutes a small white burning ember would wing around the behemoth, a small red stream of flame would trail behind the immaculate flare and lap about it like thirsty tongues. It took a moment for Heero to realize that the smaller object circling the massive star was a white dwarf star. A single tablespoon of substance from the dwarf would mass many times greater than the Earth. Eventually the gravity of the supra dense white star would collapse the well and it would begin to devour itself, falling into a black hole of its own creation. The fact that there was such a station around the oddly paired binary star system spoke very highly of his captors ability to armor against radiation and other forms of energy based assault. The X-ray radiation being sprayed out into space would have been tremendous. Once he was secured to the bed/table (it was just a slab of metal with a white sheet over it), a thick vein analogous tube was attached to the head of the gear that had been jammed into Heero's mouth. After a moment a machine clicked on somewhere in the room and a thick vile fluid began to seep down his throat. He gagged at first but forced himself to suppress the reflex so as not to drown in his own vomit. The fluid filled his stomach and then, as if gauging that he had had enough, the flow suddenly cut off. No sooner had the flow of the thick mucus like oil been shut off, then a small machine descended down from the ceiling. The room had somehow become even darker than when he had first entered. Right below the machine danced a pair of tiny orange embers. Their brightness pulsed and they grew steadily closer to his eyes. They seemed forever away, right up until the moment they pierced his eyes and filled his brain with fire. The instinct to scream was launched down his spine. Just as it reached his lungs and vocal chords it was cut short by a collapse in awareness. The last thing Heero remembered seeing of that terrible pain filled room was the bloody red eye of the raging star and its tiny white neighbor. Darkness filled his vision and his consciousness wavered over a sea of black ice. Above the ice hovered Luna, her great white iris and surrounding eyelashes of the Halo lights. She blinked, and a starship burst out from the black center while blood poured out of her ashen white eye.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
AN: okies. it took me a bloody long time to write this. Gomen.  
  
Questions? Comments? Flames? Send them to dreamed_i_killed_god@yahoo.com or catch me on AIM, my screen name is ninepin56  
  
Also, I need to give some credit to a few other authors. One of the haiku's was taken from a very good book called The Engines of God. The others were taken from a French sci-fi short story that I cannot remember the name of ( the name translates into "the cry of the heart"). Also, various other ideas/terms were influenced by a myriad of other science fiction works, too many for me to list.  
  
Also, don't worry about what it is that doc J wants, it wont have too much bearing on the story (ive had a number of emails asking if I was ever going to get to that). Just let me have fun with my world building and ill do my damndest to come up with a good story.  
  
I don't know how long it will take me to write the next part. hopefully not 6 months like this one. 


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